


No Greater Love

by Happy9450



Category: The Newsroom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happy9450/pseuds/Happy9450
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is arose from a suggestion by alexindigo in a comment to "Right Here."  It diverges from canon in that Will doesn't ask Mac to marry him on Election Night and instead she impliments her plan to save his career by taking the blame for Genoa.  It picks up the storyline from "Marvelous McAvoy's" that Mac was pregnant when she told Will about her reconciliation with Brian.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Grenade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexindigo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexindigo/gifts).



> This is arose from a suggestion by alexindigo in a comment to "Right Here." It diverges from canon in that Will doesn't ask Mac to marry him on Election Night and instead she impliments her plan to save his career by taking the blame for Genoa. It picks up the storyline from "Marvelous McAvoy's" that Mac was pregnant when she told Will about her reconciliation with Brian.

The conversation stopped as Will entered the bullpen and looked at the group gaping at the monitor. 

His interactions with everyone in the newsroom had been strained since MacKenzie’s departure almost four weeks before. There was no doubt that everyone was on “Team Mac.” It was just that no one was sure exactly what the game was. Mac was gone, and there was a rumor that it was because Will had fired her during the Election coverage, but everyone knew that she had made Jim swear a blood oath that he would stay as Will’s acting EP and ask the rest of them to remain loyal to News Night as well. This was taken, as Mac had intended, as a sign that she wasn't done supporting Will McAvoy or caring about his welfare. While that was enough to make them all stay put, it didn't make any of them, with the exception of Sloan, treat him with anything more than cold courtesy. He usually stayed in his office other than to attend the morning pitch meeting and the preliminary and final rundowns, and, of course sit at the news desk from eight to nine. It was still early for the 3:30 rundown, and so his appearance was something of a disconcerting surprise to the staff.

Charlie had spent the day after the election yo-yo-ing back and forth between dealing with the filing of Jerry Dantana’s lawsuit and piecing together what had happened with Mac. He'd been awakened at 5:30 by a telephone call from Leona Lansing informing him that Reese had gotten a voice message at 3:00 AM from “McMac” saying that Will had fired her and therefore it was not necessary for Reese to accept Will’s or Charlie’s resignations. Since Reese had already determined the night before not to accept anyone’s resignation, an announcement that had been made after Mac fled from the studio, both Leona and her son were interested in having Charlie find out “what the fuck is going on!”

When Will arrived late that day after a sleepless night, he was greeted by Maggie telling him tersely that he was wanted in Charlie’s office ASAP. He'd lain awake, replaying a thousand times both the conversation in her office which had culminated in his firing MacKenzie and the one in the Hair and Make-up Room in which he'd told her . . . well, lied to her, actually . . . about returning the ring. Starting around 4:00 AM, he'd left repeated voice messages on her cell phone, as well as texts and emails, asking her to please call . . . please talk to him. 

“What the fuck happened last night?” Charlie boomed as Will entered. “You look like shit, by the way.”

"I . . . I . . . I don't know exactly.”

“She left a voice message for Reese in the middle of the night saying that you'd fired her . . . .”

“Shit!”

“Jim seemed to confirm that she told him the same thing, but wouldn't say more, although I suspect he knows something. The only thing he'd say was that before she left last night, she made him promise that he'd stay on as your EP and try to keep the rest of the staff on board.”

“Fuck!” Will scrubbed his hands over his face. “Shit!”

“So,” Charlie said, sitting down at his desk after pouring himself a bourbon and setting one in front of Will, “I'd like to hear your version of yesterday. And, by the way, multi-syllabic words are permitted.”

So Will told Charlie the whole ugly story. Charlie listened with steepled fingers which he unlaced only long enough to reach occasionally for his drink and then for Will’s untouched one. When Will concluded his monologue, Charlie sat silently for a few minutes.

“She's planning something,” Charlie finally said, “or she wouldn't have manipulated you into firing her.” Will nodded miserably, realizing even more clearly talking to Charlie than he had during his nocturnal musings that he'd been had, played like a finely tuned violin in the hands of a master. 

“I've been trying to reach her since 4:00 this morning to take it back again and tell her that Reese has decided to fight Dantana, but she won't pick up.”

“Keep trying.”

He had been. He'd been trying for almost four weeks, leaving voice messages, sending her texts and emails. 

The bull pen monitor that was attracting everyone’s attention had been tuned by Neal to CNN. He'd picked up an Internet blurb reporting that CNN was going to do a show about ACN. Sure enough, the monitor was showing a teaser advertisement for that day’s “The Situation Room.” Wolf Blitzer was inviting them to join him for an in-depth examination of the perils of investigative journalism using as a case study, “the recent airing of an admittedly erroneous report on ACN, alleging that MARSOC forces had used sarin gas during a mission to rescue U.S. troops being held by Islamic terrorists.” A collective groan of exasperation came from the watchers, other than Will, who was busy analyzing the verbal clues . . . Blitzer’s use of the words, “erroneous,” “rescue” and “terrorists” . . . all of which made him disagree with the others about this being another hatchet job by their media brethren. Also, Blitzer was something of a personal friend, and a person who, Will knew, respected and admired Mac. When Blitzer announced that he would be joined by a surprise guest, Will was sure he knew who that guest would be.

He walked into his office. He made one more attempt to reach Mac, although he had long since come to the conclusion that it was futile. She was not going to communicate with him. Perhaps after the CNN segment airs, he thought, but not before.

He needed to make another call, one that he had been turning over and over in his mind for a few days, one he had been putting off. He wished he had a stiff drink, and even toyed with the idea of fortifying himself with a trip up to Charlie’s office. He lit a cigarette, but it tasted sour and bitter and he snuffed it out. He needed to just dial the god damned phone. It wasn't getting any earlier across the Atlantic.

The telephone on the sitting room table in the lovely old house in the Belgravia section of London emitted a shrill blast that jolted the middle-aged woman sitting in the chintz-covered over-stuffed chair next to it. She hastily looked up from the book she was reading and noted the hour on the Art Deco clock that sat beside the telephone, then she reached over and removed the receiver from its cradle. 

“Hello. Margaret McHale here.”

“Mar . . . Lady Ailesbury, how are you? I'm sorry to disturb you during the dinner hour. It’s W . . . .”

“Yes, I know who this is . . . Will, what’s the matter? Something with Mackie? What's happened?” Her voice quavered with fear.

Of course, he thought stupidly. A call from him, out of the blue, would terrify her. “Nothing. Nothing,” he said as calmly as he could. “Everything’s okay. Well, not exactly, but it's not what you think. Mac’s fine, at least as far as I know.”

“As far as you know . . . how could you not know?”

Obviously, and as he'd suspected, Mac hadn't told her parents any of the events that had transpired on or since Election Day. As Will started to answer that lately he hadn't been seeing Mac everyday, he could hear Ambassador McHale, who must have just entered the room, ask his wife who was on the telephone. He then heard MacKenzie’s mother whisper something to her husband. 

“Teddy’s getting on the extension in the bedroom,” she said to Will. They waited until they heard the telltale click and the sound on the line become more hollow.

“William!” the familiar, friendly voice boomed. “What can we do for you?”

The words, “forgive me,” popped into Will’s head, but he said, “I just want to give you and . . . Lady Ailesbury . . . . “

“Margaret! For God’s sake! Will . . . what's the matter?” Lady Ailesbury interrupted.

“. . . you and Margaret a heads up on some . . . things that are going on . . . here . . . before they hit the media over there.” And so he told them about MacKenzie trying to resign and take full responsibility for the Genoa Report, about his firing Mac on Election Day, told them that it had nothing to do with culpability for Genoa, that she'd pushed all of his buttons, they'd each said things to hurt the other, and he'd reacted like an idiot, but that he was going to make things right. Will explained how he'd now come to see that she did it all on purpose so that she could publicly deflect responsibility for Genoa away from everyone else at ACN and onto herself by saying that he'd fired her. He heard Ted McHale chuckle.

“William, my boy, if this is the only time you fall victim to a Morgan manipulation, you’re a better man than I.”

“Teddy! Really! What a horrid thing to say! I don't manipulate you!” Margaret declared. Her husband ignored her.

“The problem is,” Will said, turning the conversation serious again, “since Election Day, Mac’s cut herself off completely from me and from Charlie. I've left multiple messages daily on her voicemail and sent her texts and emails a dozen times a day, but she . . . .” He heard a note of worry in his voice and hoped that it didn't make him sound querulous or as if he were being critical of their daughter.

“Won’t respond to your requests for contact, eh? Well, how distressingly unoriginal of her.” 

Ouch! Will guessed he deserved that. That and more. Although in his early seventies, Ambassador Sir Edward McHale, Earl of Ailesbury, had lost none of his rapier wit. 

After Mac’s parents both said that neither of them had heard from her in the last couple of weeks, Will told them about seeing the teaser for Blitzer’s “The Situation Room,” with its surprise guest, and confessed that he felt certain Mac had chosen Blitzer’s show as the vehicle for her public confession.

“Yes,” Ted agreed when Will finished talking. “It sounds like her plan all along has been to position herself to fall on the grenade and shield you and Charlie and everyone else at ACN from the blast. But, Mackie’s not stupid. She knows that this interview with Wolf Blitzer won't stop the Dantana lawsuit no matter what she says, and even if she's out of touch, and thinks Lee’s settled, since it's not been reported, she can't be sure of that. So, we’ve got to assume that she won't say anything to Blitzer that could be taken as an admission of negligence or wrong-doing on her part while she was an employee of ACN since that would directly support the claim of institutional failure around which this Dantana fellow is building his case.” 

They talked on for a while, and Will relaxed a bit. He had been so afraid that Mac was going to sacrifice herself for him in some way that would irrevocably damage her reputation that he hadn't had the thought that she would have to protect herself to some degree to avoid damaging ACN’s defense of the Dantana lawsuit. Ted’s confidence in his daughter and Margaret’s unfailing kindness and compassion made Will feel better and more optimistic that somehow he could put things back together, put MacKenzie back in his ear and back into his life. Ted McHale gave Will his impressions of the weaknesses in the Dantana suit and suggested strategies for fighting Dantana and restoring News Night’s credibility that did not involve the public self-immolation of his only daughter. Will had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed discussing things with this man, and how much his daughter was like him. 

Will hung up, and sat staring numbly at his computer desktop. God alone knew how much he missed MacKenzie. He was sure that there were no words to convey the depth of his loss to another human being. Although he would not have believed it possible, it was far worse than before. This time, he lacked the salve of righteous indignation and intense anger. This time there was only longing and the emptiness.

Four times in the last few weeks, he'd given up his habitual nights on the terrace with Scotch and cigarettes, and returned to the studio. He’d spent hours in MacKenzie’s partially cleaned out office, running his fingers gently over her name plate, and touching the items she’d left behind. She'd always been a sloppy packer, or at least, she was when she was terribly upset. He knew because he had a box of things that she'd left behind when she'd left him . . . no, he thought, it was fucking time for honesty . . . long past time. She hadn't left him. She'd tried to make contact with him for weeks, months . . . years, if he counted the resumption of her messages and emails in the six months before she came back to ACN. He'd left her . . . called her a filthy, lying, cheating slut . . . told her she was dead to him . . . the memory of parts of his departure from his apartment appeared in his mind with sickening intensity. No, she’d not left him . . . He'd walked out on her.

Why in God’s name had he said and done those things? Why had he ignored her messages? What had been so fucking important? He would give all he had in this world to see her again.

He had found a tightly folded piece of paper in the back of one of her empty desk drawers that was a copy of a Maya Angelou poem in MacKenzie’s handwriting. He pulled it out of his pants pocket and read it again. He'd read it over and over a hundred times since coming across it. “Love costs all we are.”

Although he didn't think that her leaving it behind was intentional, he felt that finding the poem in the desk drawer was like her asking Jim to stay with him, further evidence that everything she was doing, this pain she was causing him . . . causing both of them? . . . was motivated by her love for him and her desire to protect him. He wished desperately that he could have seen this sooner . . . certainly before the conversation about the ring. He'd been so angry and wounded by her saying that his career was more important to him than his personal life, which he had taken as Mac saying that she didn't believe he'd ever loved her. He’d been angry enough that he'd been willing to say anything to get back at her. Now, he couldn't get the memory of her face in the Hair and Make-up Room out of his mind, and every time he thought of it, an intense fear that he had torn something fundamental and changed Mac’s feelings for him irrevocably gripped his throat and chilled his heart.

 

The preliminary rundown meeting was rocky. Everyone was distracted and keeping one eye on the clock, counting down the minutes until 5:00 PM when “The Situation Room” for Friday, December 7, 2012, would come on CNN. Will was the worst. Time for him seemed to be passing in an agonizingly slow motion, and he appeared to have no attention span at all. After the meeting, he walked up to Jim.

“I'm going to be depending on you tonight,” he said candidly. “I can't seem to focus.”

“Yea. I know. Do you really think that she'll be on? Has she told you that she’s behind this?”

“Yes and no. I just feel like . . . . Has she said anything to you about it? She’s not communicated with me since she left here . . . .” Will stopped talking to study the strange expression on Jim’s face.

“Has she talked to Charlie?” the younger man asked.

“No. What's she said to you? Or Sloan?” As he asked, he realized that Sloan had been uncharacteristically silent on the subject of Mac. He had thought that it was just the general hostility that they all felt toward him for letting her down, but maybe there was something else.

“Mac said nothing to me about any specific plans . . . Just that I needed to promise to stay with you . . . and that was a while ago. Lately, she's not been returning my calls or texts or emails . . . same with Sloan’s.” The concern on Jim’s face made him look older. “I don't even know if she's in New York. Sloan's been on me to just go to her apartment and make her let me in if she's there. Sloan's too afraid of her to do it. But, I don't know. She's still Mac and she gets really pissed off sometimes when she thinks I'm treating her like an invalid, as she calls it.”

“I'm not an invalid, Billy.” Will closed his eyes as memory swamped him. Mac, young, glassy eyed with the flu, running a temp of 102, and insisting that he stop fussing and hovering, and he, fighting the daemons that rose up and threatened to overwhelm him every time the thought came that he could lose her, that something or someone could take her away. 

When Will opened his eyes again, Jim was looking at him with compassion. As angry as Jim was at Will’s treatment of Mac, there were moments like this that he couldn't ignore, when Will’s intense love for MacKenzie was on public display. God! How could two people who need each other this much be so fucked up? Instead of asking, Jim said, “But this isn't good, Will . . . cutting herself off like this . . . She does it when she’s having nightmares, when she spirals . . . .”  
Suddenly, Kendra appeared at Jim’s elbow, reminding him that it was less than 4 hours to News Night and he was acting EP, and listing the people who needed immediate answers from him to questions necessary to their moving on in their preparation of the material for the broadcast. He hurried off with her.

Will started to turn toward his office, and then reversed course and walked to MacKenzie’s. It was dark. Although Jim was entitled to it, Will knew, that he would rather die than occupy Mac’s office. A small blessing, Will thought, that Jim also clung to the hope that Mac would return since he wasn't sure how he'd stand it if he had to see someone else sitting where Mac should be. One of the places where Mac should be. Whatever happened, Will was pretty sure that he would never take another woman to his bed, never allow . . . never put . . . someone else where Mac should be. 

He opened the door and nearly had a heart attack. A woman whom he took for MacKenzie, at least for a split second, sat in the desk chair. Sloan. 

"Hey, bro," she said sadly. "Looking for someone?"

"Oh, God, Sloan . . ." He collapsed into the visitor’s chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. He looks terrible, Sloan thought, drained, enervated, older.

“You know, Will,” she began, putting her feet up on Mac’s empty desk, “nothing’s right around here. Everybody feels it. I even overheard Mrs. Lansing chewing out Charlie for not doing something. Will and Mac apart . . .” She shook her head as if to clear a horrific image. “Even when you two are tearing at each other, it's fucking better than this. The earth’s slipped off its axis. Nothing’s right for any of us with her gone. But you,” she looked straight into his eyes, “I can't imagine what this is like for you. You can't live without her.”

His eyes filled with tears as he stood up. The motion was stiff and mechanical. She had shocked him saying that. And she had touched him. Sloan stood too and walked toward him, opening her arms.

“Thank you, sis, for knowing that,” he mumbled brokenly, as he accepted her embrace. “I've got to fix this,” he said resting his head on her shoulder. “I've got to make this right . . . get her back here.”

“I'm scared,” Sloan whispered in his ear. “She's cut herself off from Jim and from me.” She wanted to tell him that this was really bad, that she'd seen what happened when Mac thought she’d lost him. She knew that he had no idea, and that he'd be galvanized into action if she described MacKenzie’s pounding heart and rapid, shallow breathing, told him about the sweating and vomiting and shaking, and the medicine cabinet filed with anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications. But she'd given Mac her word of honor and her Japanese mother had taught her that honor meant everything.

So she silently kissed his cheek and they pulled apart. “Will, did you really fire her?”

“Yes. But not for Genoa . . . we argued about . . . us . . . and I took it back later. . . the firing . . . but by then, we both thought that Reese would accept out resignations . . . and then she said stuff and I hurt her again . . . and I went looking for her after . . . but she was gone.” Sloan looked for a moment like she was having a hard time following him but then resigned herself to just getting the gist of it, which was the usual, that Will and Mac had screwed up communicating once again. She opened her mouth to speak, but Will continued on. “She intended for me to fire her. She was trying to goad me into it and I played right into her hands. That's what I'm so pissed at myself about.”

“Why did she want you to fire her?” Before he could answer, they were both distracted by commotion in the bull pen, and could hear Neal’s voice announcing that it was seven minutes to five o’clock. 

“I think we are about to find out,” he said.

“Are you going to watch with us?”

He shook his head. “Charlie invited me to come up. I'm going . . . .” 

Sloan nodded. That was good, she thought, Will’s being with Charlie. Charlie'd take care of him.

 

Charlie had one of his office monitors tuned to CNN when Will arrived. The rest were dark. Charlie nodded grimly, and beckoned him to take a seat. Charlie didn't offer him a drink, knowing that Will wouldn't drink this close to News Night’s airtime. 

"I called Mac’s parents,” Will said as he seated himself. “Just to give them a heads up about this happening.”

“That's good. I called Blitzer.” Will looked surprised. “You were right. It's her. It's not live though, the interview. Wolf said that they recorded it a week ago.”

Just then, The Situation Room came on and their conversation ended. Blitzer began by describing the difference between reporting the news and investigative journalism and talking about how investigative journalism stories frequently begin with a tip from a source. He dropped back in history and did three minutes on Woodward and Bernstein, Mark Felt and Watergate, arguably still the most famous and consequential story in the history of investigative journalism, ending the retrospective with a clip of Ben Bradlee, the Editor of the Washington Post, who refused to be intimidated by the White House into calling off his reporters that morphed into Bradlee’s voiceover to the iconic video of a newly-resigned Richard Nixon boarding the helicopter after his resignation and giving his trademark wave and two-handed “victory” salute. 

He then went into a more recent example of “top-notch investigative journalism” which was ACN’s scoop on the magnitude of the environmental disaster occasioned by the Deepwater Horizon well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and its root causes, the defective Haliburton cement and the underfunding of the Minerals Management Service which is charged with the job of inspecting drilling wells. He showed clips from News Night’s April 20, 2010 broadcast, including Mac’s personal favorite, Will’s interrogation of the Haliburton representative. 

Charlie was sure that he could see Mac’s fingerprints all over the crafting of this show. Will, for his part, was lost in reliving the day MacKenzie McHale had walked back into his life, spouting lyrics from the Man From La Mancha and pleading with him to allow her to put his brains and looks and charm to “some patriotic fucking use.” He loved how she pronounced “patriotic” with a short “a” sound. Sloan was right, he simply couldn't live without her.

Then Blitzer turned to the subject of mistakes in journalism. Before getting to ACN’s Genoa Report, the focus of the hour, he ran through a number of errors committed by other networks, including CNN and CBS’s infamous failure to properly authenticate documents about President George W. Bush’s service in Texas Air National Guard before broadcasting a “60 Minutes” segment based on information contained in blatant forgeries. How, he posed, can a group of highly qualified and respected investigative journalists, like those at CBS and ACN, get things so wrong. Then he said the words that everyone at ACN was waiting for.

“A few days ago I sat down with MacKenzie McHale, former Executive Producer of ‘News Night with Will McAvoy’ and had a candid discussion of this issue and the particulars of how ACN was mislead into making shocking and serious allegations that sarin gas was used in a military operation.”

Will and Charlie both winced at the word, former. Charlie saw Will brace himself as Mac’s face and upper body filled the screen. She smiled pleasantly at Blitzer’s welcome. She was thin, Charlie thought, and exhausted and pale, with a wanness that make-up could not conceal. He was taken back to the day five . . . or was it six . . . years before when she'd come into his office looking like this and begged him to help her get away from New York. Charlie looked to Will, who appeared to be transfixed, staring at the screen. 

Mac and Wolf Blitzer discussed the question of sources in general, their reliability and the degree to which journalists should go to vet and verify a source. She made a compelling case that ACN had satisfied any reasonable standard of care in vetting the sources for the Genoa Report. However, two events occurred that proved to be ACN’s undoing.

The first was that a source on military intelligence matters, whom in the past had proved to have been extremely reliable, provided information ostensibly about the use of sarin in the Genoa extraction that was false, and also supplied ACN with a forged document that appeared to provide further evidence that the MARSOC unit took sarin with them when they made the extraction. Although pressed by Blitzer, Mac would say nothing more than that the source had felt that a relative, who had worked briefly for Atlantis World Media, had been mistreated and was exacting revenge. 

The second event was that then ACN Senior Producer Jerry Dantana altered raw footage of his interview with General Stomtonovich. After a brief explanation of what constitutes “raw footage,” and what Dantana had changed, Mac explained that despite ACN’s following protocol and sending two representatives to conduct an interview of this importance, she had not specifically informed the general of the identity of Associate Producer Margaret Jordan, who accompanied Dantana to the general’s home. She had told him only that Dantana would be conducting the interview, assuming that the general would understand that Dantana would bring other staff as well. Because General Stomtonovich had not checked out Ms. Jordan in advance, he refused to permit her to be in the room during the interview. This meant the Jerry Dantana was the sole witness to the general’s statements about the use of sarin in the Genoa extraction, and therefore was the only person who knew what was on the raw footage of the interview. Neither Mr. Dantana nor Ms. Jordan mentioned that she had been excluded from the interview when they returned, and indeed, Mr. Dantana had affirmatively misled his colleagues by asserting that that both of them had heard the general’s admissions that sarin had been employed in the extraction. Unfortunately, Dantana’s claim that Ms. Jordan had also heard Stomtonovich say that sarin was used was not made in her hearing until after the News Night Special Report had aired. 

During the second commercial break, Charlie’s phone rang and he picked it up. Will listened intently to Charlie’s side of the conversation. “Becca,” he said after a moment’s pause, “of course we’re watching.” Another pause. “No, none of us discussed it with her so we had no advance warning that she was going to do this.” Another pause. “I assure you we would not have kept that information from you, if we'd known.” Charlie rolled his eyes at Will. “Yes, she is.” Pause. “Yes, I agree. What? You thought she was elected President of the Cambridge Union for her legs.” Charlie paused again and chuckled softly. “Yes, she would have had his vote on that basis alone.” Pause. “I know she looks drained. It's been no fun around here either since then, I can assure you.” Pause. “Yes, Rebecca, I think that we all are well aware of what needs to happen. Okay. It's coming back on. Bye.” 

“What did she say?” Will asked.

Charlie looked at Will and considered how to answer that question. At the last second, he decided not to tell Will that Rebecca had said that Mac looked like she was going down for the count and Will needed to get his sorry ass in gear or the consequences could be tragic. Instead, he replied, “She said that Mac looks sad and exhausted but she's doing a fucking brilliant job of making our case.”

Will relaxed. He didn't know why it mattered but he didn't want Rebecca Halliday disapproving of MacKenzie.

Now Mac was describing to Blitzer how she had caught Dantana’s alteration of the raw footage. Unfortunately, she conceded she did not review it until after ACN received a call from General Stomtonovich following the airing of the special report, asserting that he'd been misquoted. Blitzer asked her if it was general practice in the industry for an executive producer to look at raw footage as a routine review of the work of a senior producer before airing a news segment or special report. Will could see from Mac’s expression that Wolf hadn't discussed this question with her before he asked. Mac conceded that it was not, that generally by the time someone had reached senior producer status, they could be depended upon to appropriately edit an interview so as not to distort the witness’s statements. 

Blitzer used this as a segue to raise the subject of the allegations in Dantan’s complaint that because Maggie Jordan was not terminated for editing George Zimmerman’s 911 call in a way that made it misleading, he was being made a scapegoat for his editing of General Stomtonovich's video. Will thought that Mac controlled her emotions admirably, but he could tell that the very idea of Maggie’s mistake being compared to Dantana’s transgression made her angry.

"Ms. Jordan had approximately two minutes to edit four minutes of raw audio of Zimmerman's 911 call down to about 30 seconds of airtime. When doing such a severe cut, it is standard practice with Q & A dialogue to eliminate the questions and focus on the answers, which is what she did. Unfortunately, with this particular bit of audio, doing that potentially created the impression that Mr. Zimmerman brought up Mr. Martin’s race when in fact the 911 operator had asked him if he could ascertain the race of the young man he was following. Even that might not have necessitated a clarification were it not for the racially charged nature of the incident. For that reason, I decided that Will . . . “ it was the first time she had said his name and it appeared to catch in her throat. Charlie saw her eyes fill with emotion. “ . . . News Night would replay that portion of the audio tape and include the 911 operator’s question. 

“In contrast, Mr. Dantana deliberately, premeditatedly and consciously edited the audio and video of a crucial witness in order to create the impression that the witness said something other than what he had actually said. In addition, Mr. Dantana did this with the knowledge that his colleagues and his superiors were relying heavily on the statements of this particular witness in making the decision whether or not there was credible evidence that our government had committed a war crime. In other words, Mr. Dantana manufactured evidence. At the time that he did this, he was not under any time constraints or pressure. Stated simply, Jerry Dantana did not get the statements from General Stomtonovich that he had hoped he would and so he created them by distorting the General’s words. 

"I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, there is a concept in the law called mens rea, which attaches different levels of culpability and distinguishes between actions performed with the intent to cause the outcome . . . in this case, to mislead the listener. . . and actions performed without that intent but which have that effect. Mr. Dantana intended to mislead his listeners, both his colleagues and his viewers, when he edited the video of General Stomtonovich. Ms. Jordan did not intend to mislead anyone when she edited the Zimmerman tape. Both in a court of law and in the workplace, this distinction in culpability calls for and explains the difference in the manner in which Charlie Skinner, Will McAvoy and I responded to each event. It would have been as inappropriate to have terminated Ms. Jordan for her mistake, as it would have been inappropriate to have failed to terminate Mr. Dantana for his actions.”

When MacKenzie finished speaking, Blitzer gave her a respectful smile, and said, “I doubt that any of our viewers would disagree with you.” Then he looked into the camera, took them to commercial and promised that when they returned, they would discuss Ms. McHale’s departure from News Night.

Will jumped up. "I need to move around, Charlie. I just need to move . . . .”

“Okay, son,” Charlie nodded, as Will headed for the door. “Will . . .” Charlie stopped him. “Move in the right direction. Let yourself go where you want to go.”

Will bobbed his head in what Charlie took for agreement and was gone. He didn't take the elevator. Despite the fact that going down stairs was the hardest motion on his knee, he headed for the stairwell and began walking down. He found himself heading back to the News Night studio. He'd have to return there at some point since he had a show to do in a little over two hours. When he got to the floor, he walked around and into the bullpen through a back entrance near the news desk. 

They were all there, watching Mac’s face on every monitor. Blitzer was saying something about her firing being like the tradition of the captain going down with the ship, “so, it doesn't matter who’s actions actually ran the ship into the ice berg, if the ship sinks, the captain goes down?”

“There is the need for accountability in journalism just as there is in the military,” MacKenzie replied. “I was Jerry Dantana’s direct supervisor on the investigation of the potential use of sarin gas during the Genoa mission. I was the highest placed executive aware of the day-to-day progress of the investigation.” Not quite true, Will thought, that description actually fit Charlie Skinner. 

Then Blitzer began to ask Mac questions about Will McAvoy. Her face changed, softened, saddened immeasurably as she began to defend him. Will couldn’t seem to process the words she was saying, only the way she looked. At one point, Will saw her composure slip for a split second. He was wondering if anyone else had noticed when he saw Hallie, who was visiting News Night, and if rumors were to be believed, applying for an internship, turn to Jim who was standing beside her.

“My God, Jim! You never told me she was in love with him!”

“What?” Jim looked at her, confused. “Why does that matter?”

The look Hallie gave Jim made Will miss Mac with such a sweet intensity he found himself holding his breath. It was Hallie’s “you’re an idiot, Jim” look. Maybe every woman had one, Will thought, but not like Mac’s. No one’s was like Mac’s. 

“What? Why does it matter?” Hallie repeated slowly and incredulously, gesturing to the monitor. Then she shook her head sadly like a witness to tragic events. “Look at her, Jim,” she commanded softly. “Who are her friends? Who are the people who matter most in her life? Where are they?”

Jim thought. “I guess, that’s us . . . here.” Hallie looked at him as if he were a not particularly bright pupil who had finally stumbled onto the correct answer.

She turned her eyes back to Mac’s image on the screen. It was clear to Will that MacKenzie was suffering. But he was surprised that it was also so clear to Hallie. Nonetheless, he was unprepared for her next words. Still looking at the monitor, Hallie raised her right hand slowly to her lips, and said in barely more that a whisper, “what must it feel like to love someone so much that you’re willing to lay down your life for them . . . Give up your whole life . . . ‘cause that what she’s doing, Jim.”

Hallie’s words propelled Will backwards as if they carried physical force. He hit a wheeled secretarial chair and sent it spinning, almost losing his balance in the process. People looked around. It was the first time that anyone in the bull pen noticed that Will had joined them. His eyes locked with Jim’s as Hallie and the rest of the staff shifted their gazes from one to the other.

“Jim,” Will said, clearing his throat, which felt dry and constricted, “may I . . . talk to you? . . . in my office.”

Jim looked at Hallie, who mouthed, “go,” and then walked toward Will, who was already heading toward his door.

Hallie turned back to the screen and watched as MacKenzie continued to assert Will’s total innocence and lack of any foreknowledge of any aspect of Genoa. “Hang on, Mac,” she whispered, “I think the cavalry’s coming.” 

"I'm going to her,” Will began without preamble as soon as Jim closed the door. For a moment, Jim thought he meant immediately and glanced at his watch. One hour and ten minutes ‘til News Night with Will McAvoy was scheduled to air. The color drained from his face. “After the show,” Will clarified. “I'd like it to be now, but I recognize that it would be unfair to try to dump the broadcast onto Sloan or Elliot this late.” 

Jim breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good,” he said, “that you’re going to go to her. And, also,” he smiled that boyish half smile, “that you’re going to do the show first.” Will nodded. “I was thinking of trying to get to her, too.” He paused. “But I'm not the one she wants.”

“I'm not sure that I am either . . . “ Will started to say. 

For some reason, this statement infuriated Jim. “Are you fucking shitting me, man!” Jim exploded. “You know something, I was on a medical transport with her from Islamabad to Landstuhl . . . she was out of her head, burning up with fever . . . shit, they had her packed in ice ‘cause it got over 103.5 . . . .” His voice was high and tight, his breathing rapid and his face flushed. “All she did the whole fucking way was beg me to get Billy . . . . Said she needed Billy. She had to see Billy . . . tell him . . . you . . . something before she di . . . .” Jim’s voice broke slightly. “Died,” he finished.

Will struggled to comprehend the younger man’s words and to marshal his thoughts into a coherent response. That must have been after the knife wound, but what caused the fever? He'd ask later. More important was the revelation that she’d asked for him . . . wanted him . . . . “Why didn't you . . . find me . . . call?” Will asked, finally finding his voice.

“Because back then, I had no fucking idea who the hell ‘Billy’ was,” Jim snarled. “Mac didn't tell me about you two ‘til the day I walked into this studio to find out that you were over at your agent’s renegotiating your contract so that you could get rid of us.”

Will sat down heavily in his desk chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. He had to get a grip. “When we were speaking earlier,” Will said, “you mentioned something about Mac having nightmares. You said something about her cutting herself off when she spiraled, at least I think that was your word, spiraled. What did you mean? Tell me about that, will you?”

Jim nodded, wondering if Mac would mind. Probably, but what the fuck. “When I first met Mac, she was . . . I don't know how to describe it . . . shattered, I guess. She was thin and pale like she'd just been really ill. If she wasn't working, she hardly spoke. When we were out in the field we started sharing a tent and that's when I learned that she had nightmares . . . terrible nightmares . . . . I never asked her what they were about. Sometimes, they just seemed to be about feeling guilty. She'd ask . . . beg . . . you . . . Billy, again . . . to forgive her. Over and over. Sometimes she seemed to be reliving something painful . . . like physically painful and emotionally painful . . . I don't know exactly.” Jim stopped. He didn't want to be asked to speculate or share his suspicions of what those dreams were about. He couldn’t do that to Mac.

“Anyway, after we'd been deployed for a while, things got a bit better . . . . The nightmares were less frequent . . . except in the summer . . . they always got really bad in the summer, and she had a harder time concentrating then and she'd kind of stop eating and sleeping. I guess that's what I meant by spiraling down.”

Will was frozen in his chair. Charlie had said that Mac was . . . what was it? . . . mentally and physically exhausted. But what Jim was describing seemed to go way beyond that. Will wondered if Charlie had heard any of this.

“She had this almost schizophrenic ability to put on a public persona . . . “ Jim continued. “You know, laugh and joke and be part of the gang . . . but inside, she was alone. She’d go into herself sometimes . . . just leave us . . . almost like she was in a trance.” There was no need to describe the panic attacks that frequently followed these episodes, Jim thought, and continued. “She really didn't let anyone in . . . not completely . . . to a degree, me and Lieutenant Dolan, but nobody else. For a while things seemed to be getting better . . . “ Jim’s voice fell to a whisper. “Then Mickey died . . . .”

“Mickey was Dolan?” Will asked. Jim nodded. “Seriously, Mickey Dolan? Like the guy in the Monkeys?”

“That was Dolenz,” Jim corrected, “but yea, close enough. His nickname was Monk because of it.” Jim smiled sadly. “He was a great guy.”

“How did he die?” Will asked.

“We were in a convoy. I was in the truck behind the one carrying Mac and Monk. The truck ahead of them hit an IED. It was a big one. Blew an armored truck to tiny bits. Blew us all off the road. Mickey threw his body across Mac . . . you know . . . to shield her from the blast and all the crap that was flying at them. He got hit with a lot of shit and something severed his femoral artery. He bled out before help could reach us . . . .” Jim paused, lost in the memory of Mac shaking violently, trying to control her tears, holding Dolan, pressing her hand over his wound, watching the blood pulse through her finger, and telling him he'd be fine when they both knew it wasn't true. 

“Was she . . . . Did she . . . love him? Was she . . . in love with him?” Will asked haltingly, fearing the answer.

“God! You really are an asshole, McAvoy.” Jim shook his head. “He was brave and kind and funny and she let him in a bit. They were never lovers . . . phsycially . . . I'm pretty sure of that.” He looked at Will. “Let me put it this way, if she'd gotten word that you’d been run over by a bus and Mickey was still alive, I think it would have been 50-50 whether she'd have just crawled into a hole and died too or let Mickey take care of her and maybe made a life with him.” Jim sounded to Will’s ears like that scenario held a certain attraction for the younger man, especially the bus part. “But as long as you were alive, Mickey didn't stand a chance. No one does.”

Will took a deep breath, and Jim looked at his watch. “Holy Shit!” he exclaimed. “You’ve got to get changed. I need to get to the control room. Crap! We’re on in seventeen minutes!

“One more thing,” Will said. “The guitar that you keep in her office, may I borrow it . . . take it with me tonight? It will save me a trip home.”

“How do you know I keep . . . ?”

Will gave a sheepish half smile that faded as quickly as it had appeared. “I . . . I've . . . I've spent a few nights in there . . . these last few weeks.”

Jim, who was half out the door, turned and studied Will in silence for a long time as if weighing whether to speak. Finally, he did. Jim would never be sure what motivated him. Perhaps being asked to relive Mac’s suffering when he had first met her, or perhaps it was the sight of her tired, drawn face as she spoke to Blitzer . . . whatever it was, Jim knew he had to speak up even if it cost him his job.

“Will, please ask yourself if . . . “ He sighed deeply and walked back into the room. “. . . if you can just love her now, really love her, and care for her and keep her safe,” Jim continued. “Because if this is all still part of the same sick obsession where you want her when she's gone but you’re compelled to punish her when she's here . . . “ He trailed off as Will rose from his chair, red-faced with rage. Will rounded the desk, but Jim held his ground, swallowed and continued, “then please stay away from her. I'll go to her apartment after the show . . . and try to get her to let me in . . . let me be with her . . . because . . . because . . . .“ 

They were now eyeball to eyeball, or as close as their height difference would allow. Will’s face was contorted into a snarl. But as he started to speak, Jim spoke over him, his chin held high as if prepared for a blow, “. . . because if you mess with her head again, hurt her once more, Will, you’re going to kill her.”

Just as suddenly as it had flared, the outrage and anger flowed from Will’s body. He sank back against his desk as if Jim had gut punched him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't feel. He had been accused of torturing the woman he loved, inflicting on her sufficient psychological violence to harm her . . . no, to kill her. And he knew that it was true. Dear God, what had he done? What had he become? The thing he hated most. His father. Will closed his eyes and tried to compose himself, tried to think of what he wanted to say.

“I give you my word . . . “ he began, speaking slowly and barely above a whisper, “my . . . most solemn oath . . . that I will never again deliberately hurt MacKenzie, and I will do everything in my power to never inadvertently hurt her . . . ever again.” Will looked imploringly at Jim. “I love her. I have loved her from the first moment I met her.”

“I've never doubted that,” Jim said simply. “But in the past, that’s not been enough.”

“No,” Will agreed. “It's not been enough.” Will walked back around his desk and picked up his briefcase from where he had tossed it on the floor that morning. He reached in, retrieved a small key and unlocked the top right hand drawer of his desk.


	2. Healing Wounds

There was someone knocking on her door!

The sound jarred MacKenzie McHale’s fragile nerves. Who would be knocking at this hour? One of her neighbors? She didn't think so. She really wasn't friends with any of the people who lived on her floor or in her building. She spent (had spent, she corrected herself) almost all of her waking hours at ACN so she had barely a nodding acquaintance with her fellow residents. Someone from outside then . . . Jim or Sloan, most likely. But how did he or she get in? Probably by waiting and smiling at one of the residents who was coming or going. There was no doorman, and the building Superintendent’s warning not to admit strangers was routinely disregarded.

Whoever was there, Mac did not intend to speak to or let him or her in. She couldn't. Just the thought of having to engage in conversation with another person made her hands tremble and her chest feel tight. She had not spoken to a living soul since leaving CNN’s Manhattan studios the week before. She had been there being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer for his show, “The Situation Room” that, at MacKenzie’s behest, was doing broadcast about the “Genoa Mistake,” as Blitzer had dubbed it. The show had aired that evening and she’d made herself watch. Wolf had done well by her, she thought. The report had refuted, albeit subtilely, Dantana’s allegations of institutional failure, and allowed her to publicize Will’s lack of involvement or culpability, and emphasize his commitment to journalistic integrity. She had announced that it was his personal decision to terminate her as executive producer. She had taken the blame, although if one listened carefully she had confessed to nothing more than being Jerry Dantana’s direct supervisor on the project. 

For a moment, Mac fantasized that the knocking was a furious Rebecca Halliday, come to tell her that she had compromised AWM’s defense, but she didn't think so. She had carefully orchestrated the content of the segment and interview with Wolf and his EP, making sure that it made points and emphasized facts that would put ACN, in general, and Will McAvoy, in particular, in the best possible light. She had privately confessed to Blitzer that the reason Will had fired her had nothing to do with responsibility for Genoa, that she'd manipulated him and angered him on a personal level. Wolf had just shaken his head sadly and said something she didn't completely understand about being one of Will’s contacts for information when she was in the Middle East.

The knocking was driving her crazy. Whoever was there was nothing if not persistent. Taking herself into her bedroom where she couldn't hear the knocking, or at least not as loudly, she sat down to wait out her visitor. Eventually, whoever was at her door would have to give up and go away. 

She sat on her bed and looked at her trembling hands. She had hardly eaten since Election Night and she’d really not slept since . . . God only knew . . . the night of the Genoa retraction maybe. Just the thought of food made her feel ill, as did the couple of mouthfuls a day that she managed to get down. The idea that Jim . . . it was probably Jim . . . cared enough to come looking for her made her eyes sting with tears. She fought them back. But the tears would come, she knew. They came several times a day, hot and fierce and uncontrollable. They came at night along with the nightmares unless she drugged herself senseless.

She thought of before . . . the last time that she had been like this. At least, this time there was just herself to harm. She had been thinking about it . . . dreaming about it . . . obsessing about it, really . . . since Election Night, when she had left ACN as soon as she felt she could turn things over to Jim, left without speaking to Will, left without telling Will. She had never said the things she had come back to New York to say, the things she had promised she would tell him. She felt like she had betrayed him once again . . . betrayed him personally with Brian, betrayed him professionally with Genoa, and betrayed him fundamentally by never telling him that he had fathered a child, a child who had moved in her, grown in her for twenty-three weeks.

She wiped furiously at her tears, but couldn't make them stop. Perhaps, it was just as well. At least, that's what she'd tried telling herself. Perhaps there were simply some promises that were never meant to be kept. But she knew she hadn't told him because she was a coward, a selfish coward. After their last conversation in the Hair and Make-up Room, she felt sure that Will’s response would be one of relief. She wasn't sure she'd survive seeing him be glad that their baby was gone, like a bullet he'd dodged. Better to keep her mourning private and the constant ache under her heart to herself. But her guilt about the baby’s death, about Brian, about Genoa and about never telling Will he'd almost had a son was crushing her.

She thought about the time in the summer after she returned to ACN, when she had come closest to telling him. They had done a story when another child had died after being inadvertently left in an overheated car. They had steered away from sensationalism and focused on raising awareness of the need for busy, distracted parents and caregivers to check their cars carefully before leaving them in parking lots, especially in summer. Will had interviewed one couple, whose infant son had died when his mother, focused on an important presentation at her office, had bypassed his day care and then left him in her office parking lot on a day when the mercury climbed to 87 degrees. These grieving parents had taken on the issue as a crusade, and had volunteered to appear on News Night.

Although Will had not intended to be unkind, he like many other people, especially those who didn't have children, simply could not fathom how someone could be so absent minded and careless as to forget that a young child was asleep in the back seat of a car. His questioning of the parents, especially the mother, had quickly become a prosecutorial interrogation. Mac remembered vividly standing in the control room and looking into the woman’s eyes as she attempted to answer Will’s questions. Mac suddenly understood that this woman accepted reactions such as Will’s as her due, her penance for a guilt for which she could never atone. She had killed her child. She deserved to be hated. 

MacKenzie knew . . . knew what this woman felt. She was this woman, a woman who through her negligence or self-indulgence had killed her baby, the life that had been given to her, entrusted to her to protect and nurture . . . her son . . . Will’s son. She couldn't breathe or think of anything except that she couldn’t watch this woman suffer any longer. She remembered saying, “Billy, please, stop, please,” into the microphone, and seeing his head jerk up at the strangeness of her voice as he glanced into camera one for a second as if he could see her there. But he had stopped the interrogation and finished the interview in a far more compassionate manner. 

MacKenzie had barely made it through the rest of the hour and then left the studio within minutes of the all clear, avoiding Will and his date du jour. She had passed one of the worst nights of her life, wracked with guilt, terrorized by nightmares and suffering repeated panic attacks. A one point, she’d decided to confess to Will the next day, but she hadn't done it, fearing that he would condemn and banish her as he had after her confession about Brian. Instead, she'd called in sick the next day and made an emergency appointment with a new therapist. As with her other attempts at therapy, her refusal to talk about the real issue meant that she had ended the process within a few weeks and come away with little more than some new bottles of anti-depressants, sleeping pills and medications to stop the panic attacks, bottles that were now neatly stacked in her medicine cabinet. 

When she pulled out of her reverie, she realized that she didn't hear knocking any longer. Listening, she walked out of the bedroom and across the living room toward the door. 

Music. Someone was playing a guitar outside her door. No words. Just the melody . . . James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend.” Jim. Now she was sure it was Jim. She thought about opening the door, even letting him in, but she knew that she couldn't face anyone, not even this kind man with whom she’d faced so much. She needed to make Jim go away. She'd have to talk to him through the door, convince him that she was fine and he needn't worry about her. For that, she knew, she would need to use her voice, and would have to make it sound normal. 

She returned to her bathroom and drank some water. She made up a little speech and tried it out. After the third time, she got through it without breaking down. After the fifth time, she decided that her voice, although unused for so long that it was more gravelly than usual, sounded as good as it was going to get. She swallowed another gulp of water, and strode purposefully back to the door.

The music had changed. It was another James Taylor song, but now it was one that stopped her heart. “Something in the Way She Moves.”

“Billy,” she whispered so softly she barely heard herself. She wrapped her arms around her diaphragm as if she could contain the pain that swept over and through her, and leaned against the door jam trying to catch her breath. Why was Jim playing that song? He couldn't know . . . Of course, he didn't know . . . If he knew, he wouldn't be playing it. But, what was happening? What diabolical deity was guiding Jim’s fingers to produce chords and notes that Will had played for her countless times. Played for her on warm summer nights on the balcony of his old apartment or lounging naked on his bed after making love. She felt the weight of everything she had lost, everything she had given up striking her like a blow with every note. She had to make it stop or she would go mad. MacKenzie cleared her throat.

“Hey, Jim,” she projected her voice through the door. “Thanks for the concert.” Mercifully, he stopped playing. “I’d let you in but I'm really not presentable or in the mood for company tonight.” She thought that her voice sounded strong, and plowed on almost without stopping to breathe. “I know that I've been ignoring your texts and messages and emails. I'm sorry. I've just been tied up lately. I'll ring you tomorrow. Promise.”

She waited for him to reply.

“I'm not Jim.”

Dear God! Will! Will was on the other side of the door.

She made a sound that was mostly a whimper and hoped that he hadn't heard.

“Mac . . . MacKenzie . . . please open the door. I need to see you . . . Kenz . . . . See that you’re alright.”

She almost laughed at the concept of “alright” being applied to her present condition. Whatever she was, it was definitely not alright. And he had called her, Kenz, the name he’d given her the first time they’d made love, a name that had never passed his lips since she’d returned to New York.

"Mac, please? I know you can hear me.” Silence. Will took a deep breath. “Look Mac, I'm not leaving.” He tried to give his voice a light breezy tone. “When I was knocking in vain back there, I made a mental list of my options here. It seems that my alternatives are to call the super or the police and tell them I'm worried about you, call a locksmith and say that I've forgotten my keys, or just kick the door down . . . .”

“I can't let . . . you in. Please, Will . . . Please go away . . . go home. I'm fine . . . really.” I can't see him, she thought. The pain of seeing him would simply vaporize her. She would be gone and her molecules disburse into the air.

Her voice sounded so weak and frightened that he wanted to cry, but he forced himself to continue to affect a jovial tone. “I'm sort of leaning toward kicking the damn door in, but the jury’s still out. You know what all of these alternatives have in common, Mac? They all have the potential to bring my presence here to the attention of our friends in the celebrity media, as they like to call themselves, but kicking in the door has the added bonus of getting me arrested for destruction of property and possibly breaking and entering.”

Silence. Well, humor didn't seem to be working. “Mac? Are you still there?”

“Yes.” The sound was small and pained. He closed his eyes and cleared his throat. He was getting in there if it was the last thing he did. He wasn't particularly anxious to have her throughly pissed off at him when he walked through the door but if that was the way it had to be, so be it. 

"Mac . . . Kenz . . . I'm not going away until I see you, even if that means sitting here all night, or kicking in the door. Now you’ve worked really hard to save my reputation, it would be a shame to have it all be for naught when I get led away by the cops in handcuffs.”

She knew defeat when it was staring her in the face. She was going to have to open the door if she didn't want Will McAvoy found by her neighbors sitting in the hall outside of her apartment, or worse, attracting attention by attacking her apartment door. She would just have to open the door and show him, convince him that she was fine and he should go home.

"Give me a minute, okay?" She didn't wait for an answer, but turned and hurried back to her bedroom, pulling off the Cornhuskers t-shirt that she was wearing along the way. She peeled off her yoga pants and pulled on a pair of jeans that were surprisingly baggy. She found an Oxford cloth button-down shirt in the closet that had the advantage of being freshly pressed which she thought would help her look more pulled together. She brushed her teeth, splashed water on her face and pinned her hair up into a ponytail. There wasn't time to try to cover the dark circles under her eyes with make up and nothing was going to hide their red rims, but she put on a trace of blush to make her look less pale, and decided that it would have to be good enough. Fighting the wave of lightheadedness that her rushing around seemed to have caused, she walked back into the hall.

He was singing. She stopped dead. Oh, God, why? Why was he doing this? She wanted to put her hands over her ears to shut out the words, but couldn't seem to move.

“And I feel fine every time she's around me now,  
she's around me now almost all the time,  
And if I'm well you can tell she's been with me now,  
She's been with me now quite a long, long time and I feel fine.”

Billy, please . . . Please stop. She wanted to shout it, but when she opened her mouth, nothing would come out. Just the sound of her breathing becoming more rapid. Her hands were trembling as she reached for the door, still listening to the words that used to mean love and comfort and now just brought pain.

“Every now and then things I lean on lose their meaning  
And I find myself in places where I should not let me go.  
She has the power to go where no one else can find me  
And silently remind me  
Of the happiness and good times that I know . . . .”

She opened the door. Will stopped playing and stood up, with a look on his face that mixed anticipation and trepidation, a look that quickly turned to concern and then panic. As Mac looked back at him, everything converged in that instant, mental and physical exhaustion, stress, lack of nutrition, guilt, longing, pain and overwhelming fear of what her life without Will in it would be. Her expression went blank and her face became even more pale, as her eyes turned to liquid pools of anguish. Will watched in horror as a sheen of sweat appeared on her upper lip and forehead. Her heart pounded much too fast, her breathing was gasping and rapid, her skin crawled, her ears rang, her vision tunneled, went yellow and then black. Almost before Will could comprehend what was happening, MacKenzie lost consciousness and collapsed in front of him.

Will McAvoy still had the reflexes, if not the knees, of an athlete. The guitar hit the floor with a sickening twang, but he had no brain cells to spare for the Gibson. He lunged through the doorway and got under her just in time to keep her head from hitting the hallway table or landing on the hardwood flood, but his bad knee buckled from the angle and they ended up in a tangled heap in her entryway.

The almost five minutes that MacKenzie McHale remained unconscious were the longest and most clarifying of Will’s life. He had come prepared to ask her to marry him, but lifting her limp body off of the floor and carrying her to the bedroom cemented into the deepest recesses of his mind and soul the fact that nothing she had ever done mattered any longer. Nothing mattered at all except that she should wake up so that he could tell her that he loved her, that he'd loved her from the first moment he'd been introduced to her in Charlie’s office, that he had never stopped loving her.

He looked up first aid for fainting on the Internet and followed the advice from the Mayo Clinic. Slowly, Mac became aware of the sensation of something cold and damp on her forehead and the back of her neck. She removed the cool washcloth from her face and opened her eyes slowly. She found herself looking into those impossibly blue eyes she knew so well. Except that now they were puffy, red-rimmed and wet with tears.

“Billy,” she whispered. She had meant to call him Will, but the name, Billy, just slipped out before she could stop it.

He collapsed against her. “Kenz . . . Oh, God . . . . You’re back. Kenz, don't ever . . . . I was . . . so . . . so scared . . . .” His voice quavered. “Thank you. Thank you, God.” And then, she heard him sobbing. She could feel his tears wetting the fabric of her shirt on her collarbone. She felt his lips kissing her throat and the side of her face. 

No! No! I can't do this, she thought. I can't have him touching me and go through losing him again. She tried to pull away and sit up.

“No, babe. Don't . . . just lie back. Rest. I've got an ambulance coming.” All of the websites he'd consulted had said to summon emergency medical help if consciousness had not returned within two minutes.

Her reaction was panic.

"No! No! Please . . . Please, Billy. Not a hospital. I'm okay. I'll be okay. Please . . . .”

“Just to get you checked out . . . .”

“Call them . . . Please? Please, I'll do anything . . . but just call . . . and stop them.” She grabbed fistfuls of his sweater. “If you ever cared for me . . . . don't make me go . . . to a . . . hospital. . . .”

“Why?” She didn't seem to hear the question.

“Did you call 911?”

“No, a private service.”

“Call them . . . Please?” Now tears were streaming down her face. “If they take me in . . . They’ll . . . admit me as a psych patient . . . I'll never be able to work again . . . build any sort of life . . . for myself.”

He wasn't sure about that, but he was distracted by something she had said earlier, something about if he'd ever cared about her. What kind of a thing was that for her to say? Did she doubt . . . . Christ! He scrubbed his hand across his face. What was he doing? This wasn't about him. It was about her. And maybe he had given her reason to doubt him. 

“Okay. Okay. Sweetheart, it's alright. I'll do it.” He pulled out his phone and dialed the ambulance service and cancelled the call, agreeing to pay the cost of the false alarm. As he spoke, he felt her relax against him.

"So,” he said to her after disconnecting the call, “here's what's going to happen. I'm going to stay here for a couple of days and feed you and make sure that you get some sleep. Now, don't look at me like that. I distinctly remember someone saying that she would do anything if I cancelled the ambulance. You wouldn't know who that was, would you, Ms. McHale?”

She didn't say a word, and in the silence, he noticed that she had started to tremble and cry again. 

“Mac, have you taken anything for . . . .” She shook her head. “Do you have something that . . . you know . . . will help . . . .”

She nodded, and then spoke, “but I'm afraid . . . .”

“You need something . . . You need to be able to eat and sleep. It's non-negotiable, Mac. I'll . . . I won't let you become dependent . . . I promise. Is it in the bathroom medicine cabinet?” Without waiting for an answer he got up and walked toward the bathroom door.

That was when it registered on MacKenzie that she . . . they . . . were in her bedroom. How had she gotten there? Well, other than the obvious, that Will had carried her. But how had he gotten into her apartment? The last thing she remembered clearly she was walking toward her front door.

And now Will was taking care of her. She needed him and he was there. She thought of a line from the song he'd just been singing, “She has the power to go where no one else can find me.” Just like when his father died. She had been the only one who had been allowed to know, allowed to show him compassion, allowed to reach in and touch Billy’s grief. She hadn't needed his midnight phone call months later to tell her that he didn't take Nina Howard to Nebraska with him. Mac had known that he wouldn't just as she knew now that there was no one else she would have allowed in tonight. Only Will had the power to go where no one else could find her. Only Will was allowed to see her like this. They were Will and Mac, and there were things that simply were not shared with the outside world.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You opened the door and fainted,” he replied, walking back into the bedroom with a bottle of pills and a glass of water in his hands. He'd been aghast at the contents of her medicine cabinet. There was a wide selection of anti-anxiety medications, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and prescription strength pain-killers. The MacKenzie he'd known before would balk at swallowing anything stronger than an aspirin. Then, he reflected that maybe not so much had changed since most of the bottles were still full and almost all were past their expiration dates. But why had so many doctors . . . he noted four different names . . . written her so many prescriptions? 

“Everything in there is expired,” he said.

She smiled slightly. “That's exactly what Sloan said.”

“Sloan was in your medicine cabinet? Why?”

She didn't want to lie, but she wasn't going to tell him the truth. She didn't ever want him to know that the morning she’d learned about his relationship with Nina . . . that he'd been lovers with Nina for months . . . she'd gone completely to pieces, and Sloan had brought her home and made her take two Xanax to stop her repeated anxiety attacks. 

So, she lied. “Oh, she was here for dinner a while back, used the bathroom and started snooping. You know Sloan.” He seemed to believe her.

"Will, why are you doing this? Why are you here?” She didn't know if she was strong enough for the answer, but she was compelled by some force outside of herself to ask.

He stared at her. He felt himself start to panic. He thought about saying that it was because he was the Director of Morale, or because he was her friend . . . thought about copping out again. But her eyes held him . . . those beautiful hazel eyes, so dark at that moment, they looked black, so sad, so vulnerable . . . and he knew that it was time for the truth.

“Because I love you . . . because I'm in love with you. I always have been. I've never stopped. That's what the voicemail . . . the night of the bin Ladin broadcast . . . that's what it said . . . that I love you . . . that I never stopped loving you . . . .”

“Wait, wait.” She held up a hand as if to stop time. “You thought . . . You thought for months that I had heard you say that you still loved me, and I had said . . . done . . . nothing about it!?” It was said only halfway as a question, and she didn't wait for answer. Tears started leaking from her eyes again as she spoke. “How? How could you imagine that I wouldn't . . . . Didn't you see me . . . know me . . . at all?” But even as she spoke, she knew the answer. Will’s capacity to believe that he was unloved and unloveable had been formed so young and at the hands of the very people who should have cherished him, that in the end, it would always triumph over evidence, experience and reason. Hadn't she just used that knowledge to manipulate him into firing her?

"Well, you see . . . I also said in the message that if you didn't feel the same way . . . If you didn't want to try again . . . you should just ignore the message and never mention . . . .”

“You’re an idiot, Billy.”

He didn't tell her that this was exactly what Nina had said, minus the “Billy,” when he'd given her the same explanation. But he wasn't going to think about Nina or what the fuck he'd been doing there. Instead, he put the water and vial of pills down on the nightstand and took MacKenzie into his arms. He held her against him and kissed her hair. He wanted to kiss her lips, but first, there was something that he needed to do.

“Wait here,” he said.

“Alright,” she whispered, and he hated it that she sounded frightened once more.

He ran as fast as his throbbing knee would allow back to where he had discarded his jacket in the entryway. Stopping only long enough to pick up the guitar and give it a cursory inspection, he retrieved the small teal box from his pocket. Opening it as he returned to the bedroom, he realized that he hadn't thought about exactly what it was he wanted to say, or more to the point, there was so much he wanted to say, he didn't know where to begin.

He saw her eyes go wide when she saw that he was holding the ring. "I didn't return it,” he said simply.

“What? What’s happening?”

“I didn't return it . . . because it's yours. It's always been yours. I tore up the receipt the day I bought it. And I picked it out . . . I lied when I said that Scott's assistant did. I picked it out . . . for . . . because I love you . . . I'm in love with you . . . and I want to marry you.”

He closed the distance between them.

“I feel like I could do this better . . . no . . . I love you and I . . . . Will you marry me?”

She smiled at him, a real smile, her wonderful smile that crinkled up her eyes and always made him feel like nothing could go wrong in life as long as that smile was aimed his way.

“Yes,” she whispered so softly that he wasn't sure if he'd heard her speak. “Yes. Yes,” she repeated more loudly until she was silenced by his mouth covering hers. 

If this isn't happening, Mac thought, if this is a dream, then please God, just let me die without ever waking up. The tears came again, and with them a bone deep exhaustion. She began to sob, mixing gasping breaths with salty kisses. Will held her and rocked her until the shaking and the crying jag had mostly passed. 

“Food and sleep and medicine, Mac,” he said, reaching for the water and vial of Xanax. She thought that just letting the tears and shakes come and having Will hold her until they passed might be the healthiest way to handle it, but she could see that it was freaking him out and had to admit that it had been getting in the way of eating and sleeping, so she dutifully took the glass and swallowed the two pills that he handed her.

“Okay, now food,” he said looking at the display on his phone. “You’ve not been eating.” It wasn't a question. “I'm going to the kitchen and fix you something . . . “ He saw her eyes go wide with concern. “ . . . something that will go down easy and stay down.”

“Take me with you,” she whispered. He looked at her a little strangely for a second and then helped her off the bed. Keeping his arm around her waist to steady her, they walked together into the kitchen. She sat on a stool, sipping some water that he gave her and watched him become increasingly frustrated with her poorly provisioned pantry, and his inability to find any of the foods that the Mayo Clinic website recommended for people breaking long fasts. 

Finally, he came upon some Irish oatmeal and started to boil water. He also found a piece of paper and a pencil, made a list and called his food service to place an order with expedited after hours delivery to MacKenzie’s apartment. 

“I've been eating out a lot,” she lied defensively when he hung up from the call. He just rolled his eyes and kissed the top of her head.

He served her a toddler-sized portion of oatmeal with some liquid non-dairy coffee creamer since the milk in her fridge had turned to something that looked like yogurt and smelled terrible. It took her a while and a fair amount of cajoling to finish the oatmeal, but she did. He wanted to make sure that the oatmeal stayed down and get her to eat a little more before he put her to bed, so they sat watching a late-night talk show while they waited for the groceries to be delivered. She stayed tucked up against him and barely moved. 

When had she become so fragile, he wondered. Not that he minded MacKenzie clinging to him. He could never get enough of touching her. It was just that this person seemed so different from the persona that she had projected to him and to the world over the last few years. 

The doorbell rang and she nearly jumped out of her skin. He kissed her forehead and walking to the security panel, and confirming that it was the grocery service, let the two men carrying bags and boxes into the building and then into the apartment. After signing for the delivery and tipping them outrageously, he dug through the bags until he found containers of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. He washed a small portion of each and carried them back to the living room. 

“Here,” he said, “you like berries, and according to the Mayo Clinic website, they will help get your blood sugar levels back up.” Popping one into her mouth, he continued, “that should help get rid of the feeling of being lightheaded.” He fed her a few more. “Eat a few, and then it's off to dreamland.” He thought he saw her wince slightly. “Too sour?”

“What?”

“Are the berries too sour?”

“Oh, no. They’re good. Thank you.”

Mac finished the berries, which gave Will inordinate pleasure, and then rested her head against his chest as though the simple act of eating had exhausted her. Amazingly, she felt her eyes growing heavy and thought that for the first time in weeks . . . months . . . she might actually be able to sleep. 

“Come on, sweetheart, lets get you into bed. You’re falling asleep, Kenz.” He wanted to carry her, but gave in when she insisted on walking to the bedroom, mostly in deference to the current condition of his knee. He thought that after she fell asleep, he might just raid her medicine cabinet and take a Vicodin. Mac’s explanation that Sloan had been snooping around in the bathroom popped into his head. It sounded plausible, but somehow wrong too. He’d think about it later. Right now, he was going to make sure that MacKenzie slept. 

“What do you want to sleep in?” She heard him ask. She wanted to say, in your arms, but felt shy and too unsure still about what was really happening. So, she opened one of her drawers and took out an old ACN t-shirt that, like almost all of her t-shirts, had once been his. She carried it into the bathroom to change her clothes. When she emerged, she found that Will had stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, and was sitting on “his” side of the bed. 

“Do you mind?” he asked shyly.

“Mind?” she echoed, and smiled a funny sort of half-smile, shaking her head. She climbed into her side and moved closer to him. “Hold me, Billy. Hold me like you’re never going to let me go.”

He found that he couldn't sleep. As he’d held her and caressed her into slumber, the question he'd posed to himself earlier came back to him again. She used to be so feisty (well, she was still feisty most of the time) optimistic and self-confident (she was still that too, at least in the newsroom). But she was also fragile and seemingly insecure. How had this happened? He knew. It sliced through him like a knife. The woman he'd imagined had betrayed him, a woman all-powerful, un-feeling, and unaffected by the end of their relationship had never existed. Instead, there had been a real person on the other end of his abuse, a person who had been worn down by the years of his ignoring her requests for communication, the years of his subtle and not-so-subtle punishments, the years of waiting for him to fire her at the end of each week, the years of his constant reminders that she was a liar and a cheat who didn't deserve even his attention let alone his love, trust or forgiveness. It was this person who had been confronted with Genoa and decided that she had now ruined his career.

"I'm so, so sorry, Kenz,” he'd whispered. “Please forgive me.”

Fearing that his tossing and turning would wake her, he waited until he was sure that she was soundly asleep, and then carefully extricated himself from the tangle of their arms and legs and walked back out to the kitchen to finish putting away the groceries. Then he sat down and with the volume muted to where he could hardly hear anything, watched CNN’s late night international coverage. He thought that he'd only closed his eyes for a second, and was surprised to find himself jolting awake on the sofa. It only took a moment for the sound that had awakened him to register in his brain and he was on his feet. It was MacKenzie moaning and crying as if she were in great pain. 

She had kicked off the bedclothes and was curled up with her hands clutching her abdomen, twisting and turning as if she were in agony. At first, he thought that she'd eaten too much or he'd fed her the wrong things, but then he saw that her eyes were closed and she appeared to still be asleep. A nightmare. Jim had said something about nightmares . . . What? . . . Oh, yes, that they'd been bad when he'd first met her, gotten better, except in the summer (that struck Will as strange) and gotten bad again after her friend died. But why had they started?

He got to the bed and tried to take her in his arms, but she fought him fiercely, scratching him on the right cheek by his ear. He'd take shit from Make-up on Monday for that. When he finally got his arms around her, and pressed her to his chest, he could feel her heart pounding and racing, and he could see and hear that she was hyperventilating. In between moans and shrieks, he could also hear that she was trying to talk, but he couldn't make out much of anything except occasionally . . . Oh, God! . . . his name . . . she was talking to Billy . . . to him. 

He tried to soothe her. He told her that he was there . . . Billy was with her. Billy loved her and would never let her be alone again. Her thrashing movements, the pounding of her heart and pace of her breathing all seemed to be slowing down for which he was deeply thankful, but it also meant that he could make out the sound of her telling Billy that she was sorry about someone . . . about “him.” At first, Will thought that she was referring to Brian, and so he told her again and again that it was alright . . . she was forgiven. Yes, he thought, I've done this to her . . . I've broken her. Christ, I'm no better than my father. But then, he listened again more closely, and wasn't so sure she was talking about Brian. She seemed to be apologizing to Billy for not protecting him. 

Thinking this was about Genoa, he told her that she had . . . she had protected him. She had been fucking brilliant, he told her. She'd made and argued ACN’s case beautifully. Even Rebecca was impressed. She'd made him seem like an icon of journalistic integrity. He kept talking to her, telling her that she had protected him, she had saved him. Then she went almost limp and opened her eyes, although he wasn't sure if she was actually awake and could really see him.

“No,” she said in an eerily calm voice. “No, I didn't. He died.” 

Dolan, Will thought, that was the name that Jim had mentioned. She must be talking about Dolan. But why would she be asking “Billy” to forgive her for Dolan’s death? Maybe he was being too logical. It was a nightmare after all all. He thought that his years of punishing her for Brenner had made her take on the guilt of everything bad that occurred, even Dolan’s bleeding to death (it's what happened with Genoa, wasn't it?) and it weighed down on him.

She was looking at him. She was awake.

“Hey, there,” he said softly, pushing the damp hair off of her forehead. “Bad dream.”

She nodded.

“Want to talk about it? Was it about Dolan dying?”

She started to shake her head when her eyes went wide with surprise. “How . . . ?”

“Jim . . . Jim mentioned that there was someone . . . you . . . someone you were close to . . . .” Will could feel the green-eyed monster of jealousy raising its ugly head. God, Jim was right, he really was an asshole. 

“No,” she said flatly. “It wasn't Mickey I was dreaming about. Why do you ask?” Suddenly, she looked alarmed. “What was I saying?”

"Not much," he lied. "Just that someone had died."

She nodded. "I don't want to talk about it right now. Okay?”

“Of course it's okay.” She could see something . . . disappointment . . . rejection . . . on his face.

“I will tell you about it . . . someday soon. I promise. Just not now.”

“Whatever you want, Mac.” 

She had the automatic reaction that she’d had for years to someone telling her to do or have what she wanted . . . that she couldn't have what she wanted. But that wasn't true now . . . was it? Could she say it? Could she risk saying it out loud? She looked at her left hand. The ostentatiously large diamond was still there. She hadn't dreamt it after all.

“I want you, Billy. Just you.” 

God knew he wanted her. He began to kiss her passionately and to run his hands over her body, under the shirt. His fingers touched the scar on her stomach. Dear God! It was longer and more jagged than he'd imagined. There were other scars, smaller ones on her back and her legs. Remnants of the IED explosion that killed Dolan, he surmised. Each one fueled his passion, painful reminders that he might have lost her forever, that he might never have gotten a second chance at happiness. He kissed her again and again. Down her throat and over her breasts, moving his hand over her panties until he could feel the silk between her legs begin to grow damp. He felt her tremble under his touch.

The intensity overwhelmed her. After so many years of dreaming, so many years of penance and suffering, she was in Will’s arms. These were Will’s hands on her. His beautiful, beautiful hands. She fought as long as she could but the tears triumphed again.

The salty taste and the wetness on her face shocked him. Didn't she want this? Was his touch upsetting her? He pulled back and watched her for a clue.

“Billy . . . Don't . . . Don’t stop. Don't look at me like I'm going to shatter . . . like I'm some sort of psychotic . . . I'm not sad . . . It's just . . . .”

“I'm not,” he replied defensively, although he had been wondering if he should try to get her to take another Xanax. “I know you’re not psychotic, Mac, you’re not crazy and you’re not going to shatter. But I’ve . . . I just don't know what to do. I know that this . . . your not eating and sleeping . . . is my doing . . . my fault . . . I've done this . . . .”

She fought the urge to tell him he was wrong. But then thought better of it. She didn't want to talk, and besides, he wasn't wrong, not completely anyway. “Then undo it,” she said simply. 

"How?" he asked miserably.

She put her hand on the side of his face, and bringing her lips to his ear, whispered, “you know how, Billy . . . you've always known how.”

Yes, he did. It was not a matter of memory. It was a matter of being. He knew every inch of her, every place . . . every way . . . she liked to be touched. Whatever he'd told himself, he'd forgotten nothing. She was the chords to a song he knew by heart, a song he could never forget.

He started at her feet. Just as he had the first time, she remembered. Caressing and kissing his way up her legs, he murmured that she was beautiful and that he had always loved her. He found her and opened her with his tongue and lips, reveling in her scent and taste and silky smoothness. He could feel the exact moment that she returned to him, the point at which she accepted him as a source of pleasure without fearing . . . believing . . . knowing . . . that any joy she took from him would soon be followed by sorrow and pain. Once again, he experienced the depth of the emotions she’d been carrying since the morning that she'd told him about Brian. He vowed to dedicate his life to making sure that she would never feel such pain again, that from that moment forward, she would associate him with joy and comfort and ecstasy.

Afterwards, they both slept soundly for most of what was left of the night. 

It was almost dawn when the second dream began. She was wearing the same jeans and Oxford cloth shirt that she had donned to open the door to Will. She was pregnant, walking in a park, when she saw a small boy, a child of about four or five, ahead of her on the path. As she got closer to him she could see that he had blond hair, blue eyes and a slight cleft in his chin. He smiled at her. He looks just like Will, she realized. She knew that his name was also William. But when she called to him, he turned and began to run away from her. She followed him, calling him and asking him to stop running. 

Suddenly, Nina Howard appeared on the path up ahead of the child. She was crouched down with her arms open. The little boy was running toward her, and as she got closer, MacKenzie could hear Nina, calling him William and telling him to “come to Mummy.” He was Nina’s son! The revelation stunned MacKenzie. “No! No!” She tried to scream, but could make no sound. 

When she looked down, she was no longer pregnant, and she was naked except for one of Will’s old University of Nebraska t-shirts. Her legs were sticky and red, smeared with blood. Then Will appeared behind Nina. He walked up to her just as the child ran into her arms. Nina stood and handed the boy to Will. She turned to Mac and said, “you see, I can do what you can not. I've given Will a son.” Then turning back to Will, she said, “come along, darling, lets take him home.” 

Now, Mac did scream, screamed and sobbed. For a moment, Will looked longingly in her direction. Then he said apologetically, “she has my child,” and . . . . 

MacKenzie’s eyes flew open in panic. She was gasping for air and her heart was pounding wildly. It took a moment before her surroundings registered and she became aware that she was in her bed, in Will’s arms, her cheek pressed to his naked chest.

“Kenz . . . Kenz . . . It's okay . . . okay. I'm here. You’re safe. It was just another dream.” Will stroked her face and her hair. Kissing her softly and rocking her slightly as he spoke.

The comfort quickly turned to passion. This time MacKenzie used her mouth to remind him of what a poor excuse for his heart’s desire all of the women he'd bedded these last few years had been. When they were both finally spent and sated, he slid out of her and rolled to his side where he could see her face. 

‘The nightmares, Mac . . . .”

“I'm . . . alright. I dreamt that . . . Nina . . . “ Will cringed at the sound of the name. “. . . that Nina had . . . had your baby. He was in the dream too. A little boy . . . blond, with your eyes and your . . . . His name was . . . William . . . and you told me that you had to go with . . . her . . . with Nina because . . . because of him . . . . “

“Mac,” he sat up, taking her with him and placed his hands on her shoulders and waited for her eyes to meet his. “Mac, that couldn't have happened. I would never have let that happen. I was careful to never run any risk . . . any risk at all . . . that I'd get someone pregnant. I always . . . always . . . wear a condom.” 

She understood what he was saying. Even though she had reason to believe it was unnecessary, she had gone on the pill again when sex with Wade could no longer be avoided if she wanted to continue the relationship. She had been unwilling to run any risk that something could happen that would tie her to Wade.

They both looked down at Will’s naked groin, and as she smiled slightly, he thought about that night and the millions . . . billions? . . . of sperm that he had pumped into MacKenzie from as far inside her as was humanly possible.

“Are you on the pill?” She shook her head. “Well, shit, Mac . . . .”

They both burst out laughing as he grabbed her and pushed her down onto the bed, and covered her face and neck with kisses.

"Not you," he resumed when they had finished kissing and touching again. “No condoms with you. I want to have children with you.” He hadn't intended to say that . . . hadn't intended to make himself so vulnerable.

He was totally unprepared for her reaction to this statement. Tears filled her eyes and her breath hitched again, as she folded up, curled on her side away from him and a small moaning sound escaped her throat. Guilt overwhelmed her. She had failed to keep their unborn baby safe, and she'd robbed him not only of that child, but, if he stayed with her . . . and God knew she wanted him to stay with her . . . of any future children of his own. Perhaps she should take off the ring right now and send him away . . . send him back to Nina . . . to someone who could give him a child. Or, perhaps it would be unnecessary because after she told him about . . . the name William popped into her head . . . it must have been because of the nightmare . . . the baby’d had no name . . . . After she told him about the baby . . . and she had to do so now . . . he'd look at her as he had looked at the woman who'd left her child in the car . . . he'd hate her again and demand the ring back and leave her. Oh, God! What would she do then? An image of the bottles of pills stacked in her medicine cabinet filled her mind. She brought herself back from the edge and realized that Will was speaking.

“. . . but . . . but . . . “ he was stammering, “it's okay . . . it's okay, Kenz . . . if you don't . . . I thought you did once . . . wanted kids . . . but it's okay if that’s changed . . . .”

She shook her head violently, and sat up, turning to face him. He handed her a tissue and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “No,” she said softly, “that’s not what's changed. I'm what's changed . . . my body, I mean. I might not . . be . . . able to have . . . a baby . . . to conceive, or if I do, to carry it to term.”

"Why? Why do you think that?” She hadn't thought that before. She'd been compulsive about birth control. Well, until she wasn't . . . they weren't. But that was so close to the end, he forcibly pulled his thoughts away from that time.

“Because I was told that by someone who is supposed to be the foremost gynecologist in the UK.”

“When?”

“On my way back from Pakistan . . . after CNN pulled me out.”

His hand touched the ragged scar on her abdomen, and tried to let go of the image of a tiny MacKenzie look-a-like, smiling that crinkly eyed smile, an image that he hadn't even realized he'd been carrying with him all of these years. He schooled his face not to show disappointment, but he didn't fool Mac for a moment.

“The knife wound?” he asked slowly..

It would have been so easy to lie, so easy to just say yes. But she had to tell him the truth. They couldn't build their lives around a lie. Besides, she realized, the lie would be unmasked the first time Will . . . who would be her husband . . . talked to a doctor.

“No. Not the knife wound.”

"What then?" His voice held more anguish than he would have liked.

“I need a minute . . . “ she said, swallowing hard, “and a cup of coffee . . . or tea. Then we’ll . . . I'll tell you what happened.”

She was frightened, he realized. He hated it when people were frightened of him, MacKenzie most of all. 

“Mac,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders, and looking directly into her eyes. “Whatever happens . . . whatever happened . . . I’m never going to hurt you again. I'm always going to love you . . . to be in love with you . . . You own me.” She wanted to believe him. She had to believe him.

When their cups were empty, as well as the bowl of oatmeal with berries and milk they had shared at Will’s insistence, she stood up from where they were seated at the kitchen counter, and reached for his hand. “I think I'd like to go back to bed. I'd like you to hold me while I talk.”

They settled themselves on the bed again still wearing the clothes they had put on to go to the kitchen. Will pulled her against him, sitting her between his legs, and she began.

“The reason that I told you about Brian when I did was because I needed to tell . . . . “ When he looked at her as if she were about to tell him that her previous explanation hadn't been the truth, she stopped. “It was what I said, Billy, it was because our relationship had moved into something more serious than anything I'd ever known.” God! This was so much harder than she’d even imagined it would be. “But I'd thought that for a while, and I'd been putting it off . . . but the reason that I couldn't put it off any longer was . . . that . . . I had . . . gotten pregnant.

“I figured that I'd tell you about Brian and you’d get mad and I'd tell you that it didn't matter, that it was a stupid thing . . . the stupidest thing that I'd ever done . . . but that it had happened over a year before and I'd never seen him again since then. I'd ask you to forgive me, and I'd tell you that I loved you as I'd never loved anyone in my life, and then . . . then, I'd tell you that we were going to have a child.”

He was gaping at her, open mouthed and speechless. When he spoke it was haltingly and disjointedly. “What you said . . . on Election Night . . . that you never saw Brian . . . during our last . . . year . . . that was true?” As soon as it was out of his mouth, as soon as he heard himself, he wished he could bite off his tongue.

Something, maybe the fact that she had just given him the answer and he hadn't heard it, or more likely, she supposed, the residual calming effects of the Xanax in her system, but something enabled her to not hear his question as another attempt to remind her that she was a lying, cheating slut, but rather, as a manifestation of Will’s struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible. She reached up and touched the side of his face.

“I know. It's a lot to get your head around, isn't it, Billy? But you remember how sloppy we'd gotten about birth control?” The sadness on her face and compassion in her voice ripped him apart. So many questions tumbled around in his brain, along with the suspicion that she was about to tell him that she was unable to conceive because of a botched abortion, a procedure she’d undertaken to get rid of their child. He couldn't trust himself to speak so he simply stared at her. 

“I thought for a while that even though you'd said . . . you never wanted to . . . to see me again . . . you didn't really mean it. It kept me going for weeks . . . months actually. . . believing that you would eventually answer one of my emails, or texts . . . or return one of my calls.” She laughed a sad, ironic laugh. “I had this whole fantasy in my head . . . how you’d call and . . . we'd talk . . . and you'd believe that . . . Brian meant nothing . . . that all that had really happened with him was I'd gotten sure that I loved you. And then . . . I'd tell you about the baby . . . and you'd be so happy . . . you'd rush over here and . . . .”

“Oh, God, Kenz . . . I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“No. It's okay. You didn't know.” Something about her saying that made his gut clench.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“Well, eventually, I realized that . . . you’d meant what you'd said . . . that you were done with me . . . . “ He started to speak, but she put her finger tips to his lips. “Please, please . . . don't stop me. This is so hard. Let me just do it. Okay?” She looked like a child, he thought, like the child he'd fallen in love with all those years ago. He nodded.

“When it all really hit me and I realized that I'd never see you again, I fell apart.” She tried to smile and raised her shoulders in a shrug. “Kind of like what you see now. I couldn't eat or sleep then either. I guess I've sort of established that I don't do well when I’m not with you everyday.”

“Well, you don't have to worry about that again for the next fifty years.” He tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ear.

"Really? Fifty? You know I'm going to hold you to that, Billy.”

“I certainly hope so,” Will replied, knowing that he’d smoked his last cigarette. 

Then the smile faded from her face. “Anyway, like I said, I didn't . . . couldn't . . . sleep or eat, except of course then I was pregnant, so . . . it was much worse. I was in the second trimester and I'd gotten down to about eighteen pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight when my doctor threatened to hospitalize me. I knew that I had to get out of New York so I went to Charlie . . . .”

“You told Charlie?”

“No! I've told no one. My doctor here knew and a few people in Kabul found out, but that's all. I knew that you deserved to be the first person whom I tell.” He wasn't sure he deserved anything, but he just kissed her forehead. Then it hit him.

“Kabul?” Will repeated, confused. Dantana’s complaint talked about Mac attempting suicide in Kabul in the summer of 2007, but this was the first Will had heard of her actually being there from any credible source.

“Charlie got me on a team that was shooting a short fluff piece about humanitarian efforts by the military in Kabul. All in the Green Zone. I went there in early June . . . .”

“June! My God, Mac, you were what . . . “ Will paused, calculating. “. . . four months?”

She nodded, but kept her eyes cast down, looking at her fingers picking compulsively at the bed sheet. “Five, actually. I was about twenty-three weeks when I landed in Kabul. I went into labor a few days later . . . during the night . . . in my room at the Intercontinental. I don't remember much about it. The placenta detached and ripped . . . me . . . up too. The baby was . . . much too early . . . dead, of course . . . . There was a lot of blood. I know that because I dream about it . . . I can smell blood . . . in my nightmares . . . . The maid came in to clean in the morning and found me . . . and they got me to a military hospital and saved my life.” She felt Will’s hand cover hers and still her moving fingers. “They . . . well, this one young doctor . . . tried to fix me up so that everything would still work. He thought that he had . . . but the doctor in London didn't agree.” She thought of the doctor in Kabul . . . Danny . . . Danny something . . . she couldn't remember his last name . . . with his kind face and optimistic confidence. And she thought of Sir Robert Eagleton in his luxurious surgery, with his supercilious pseudo compassion.

“You said . . . .” She heard Will’s voice break, heard his sob and ragged breathing, but still she didn't look up. “Earlier . . . you . . . said . . . ‘he died’ . . . you knew . . . they told you . . . the baby . . . was a boy?”

Again, she nodded, and whispered, “and I saw him . . . I think . . . I see him . . . in the dreams. I think it's memory, but . . . I can't be sure . . . .”

Later, Will would replay the conversation over and over and identify each of the enormous holes in MacKenzie’s narrative, but for now, he simply turned her in his arms, and buried his head against her, and sobbed. When he could breathe again, he begged her to forgive him for all he had done to hurt her, and told her he would spend his life trying to make it right. They clung to each other and cried for a very long time, mourning the child they had made, but would never know. 

Unaware of the odds against it, a single sperm, along with hundreds of thousands of others, made its way up MacKenzie’s left Fallopian tube. Furiously lashing its microscopic tail, it managed to drive its head into the tough outer layer of the single ovum that happened to be traveling down the tube. Breaking through first, the sperm merged its compliment of chromosomes with the ones waiting inside the egg. 

As Will cried and rocked and kissed and comforted MacKenzie, this now full compliment of homo sapient chromosomes were forming themselves into the genetic blueprint for a blond, rosy-cheeked female, with gloriously long legs and hazel eyes that would crinkle up just like her mother's every time she smiled at her daddy. They would name her Charlotte, for Charlie Skinner, the man, as Mac liked to joke, “who was, after Will, most responsible for Charlotte’s existence.” Nine months later, a few seconds after she slid from his exhausted wife’s body into Will’s waiting hands, he would spare a brief thought for the foremost OB-GYN in the United Kingdom, a man who obviously didn't know everything.


	3. Flashbacks

On Monday, Will was once again greeted by Maggie telling him that he was wanted in Charlie’s office. Unlike the scowl he'd aimed her way the morning after Election Day, this time, Will flashed her a big smile and asked her to tell Millie that he'd be right up. True to his word, he dropped his briefcase, hung up his jacket and headed for the elevator.

It had been hard, incredibly hard, to roll out of bed and leave MacKenzie that morning. She seemed to be okay, or was getting there, and she had given him such a passionate send off that he'd arrived sufficiently late to raise a few eyebrows. Or maybe it was the goofy smile that he couldn't get off of his face that was making people stare at him. No one loved him like MacKenzie. No one had ever loved him like Mac did.

He had expected Sloan to accost him first thing and demand to know what had happened with Mac, but she didn't seem to be around. He'd texted both Sloan and Jim on Friday night and told them that Mac was alright. Not exactly true, but close enough and designed to reassure them without provoking further communication. They both appeared to understand. Sloan had simply texted back a “thumbs up” symbol and Jim had responded with the words, “you’re the man.” He certainly hoped so since Kenz was definitely the woman. He had spent the weekend caring for and making love to the most attractive woman he had ever seen in real life, who also happened to be his closest friend and most trusted partner. The idea of never being with another woman for the rest of his life thrilled him. 

Millie waved him in just as Charlie looked up from the newspapers that were spread out on his desk. He had reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and looked to Will remarkably like MacKenzie. 

“Good Morning,” Charlie nodded. “You look better than the last time I saw you.” He looked back down at the tabloid sitting on the top of his stack of papers. “You'd think that they would be able to get Page Six onto page 6, wouldn't you? I mean, it's not brain surgery, it's not rocket science . . . .”

“Why are we talking about Page Six?” Will interrupted.

“Because you’re in it.”

“Are you shitting me? What could I possibly have done to get mentioned in Page Six?”

“Well, let's see,” Charlie began raising the paper and giving it a little shake. “It says here that you, or ‘someone who looks suspiciously like ACN’s flagship anchor,’ a surprisingly pulled punch for this crowd, ‘was spotted in the wee hours of Sunday Morning emerging from a mid-town luxury high-rise on 49th Street. Could it be that after recently jettisoning ex-girlfriend and Executive Producer MacKenzie MacHale . . . “

Will moaned loudly. “Fuck!”

“Good to see you are your usually articulate self,” Charlie said dryly before reading on. “’McAvoy is having more success with the ladies.’ Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Shit!” The only silver lining Will could see in this cloud was that apparently no one connected to Page Six knew where Mac lived.

Charlie smiled slightly while Will pushed his hands through his hair. “So, was it you? Were you coming out of a mid-town luxury high-rise early Sunday morning?”

“Yes.”

“And was it the building on 49th that I think it is?”

“Yes.”

A huge smile spread across Charlie’s face. Will tried to keep his expression impassive but failed as the corners of his mouth too began to turn up.

“Well, that the best news I've had all year. I went looking for you after the show on Friday and was told that you'd left. Then Sloan told me where you'd gone. What were you doing walking around mid-town at dawn yesterday?”

“Mac was asleep and I wasn't, so I got up and decided to go for a walk to clear my head. I can't imagine who spotted me. I doubt that one of the the winos that I passed sleeping it off in Times Square ratted me out to Page Six, but I guess you never know.” Will didn't say that he'd been lying awake for hours thinking of all of the things that he wanted to ask Mac about the events in Kabul, and that he'd gotten up and Googled images of a twenty-three week old fetus. Christ! Will scrubbed his hand across his face at the memory. It was really a baby by then. She'd said she'd gone into labor but he hadn't totally grasped what that must have meant until he looked at the images. And she'd been alone when it . . . he . . . his son . . . had been . . . was born even the right word?

“How is she?” Charlie asked softly, slightly alarmed by the expression that had come across Will’s face.

"She's . . . she'll be alright.”

“Is she coming back?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Charlie was flabbergasted that Mac had turned Will down, and that his boy seemed to be taking it so well.

“I'm tempted to ask, ‘what part of no don't you understand?’ She says that if I or you or even Leona undo her firing, it will make the whole thing on CNN look like a hoax, which would damage our credibility even further and embarrass Blitzer . . . .” Will made a sort of helpless “you know” gesture with his hands. “Despite the op-Ed in the Times yesterday, she does have a point,” he added referring to an article that ran on the editorial page discussing Mac’s appearance on CNN and urging Charlie Skinner or Leona Lansing to countermand Mac’s termination, arguing that there was no evidence, including the allegations in the Dantana complaint, that Mac was culpable in the Genoa Report’s errors. “She's gotten calls from a couple of people at Columbia J-school and someone at NYU who want her to teach, and I think she's going to take them up on it. I'm pretty sure that after a year of teaching I'll be able to hire her back.”

“You’re going to survive without her for a whole year?”

“Not exactly. She'll be my wife. She just won't be my EP.”

“You’ll keep Jim? Wait a minute . . . What the fuck did you just say?”

“I said that MacKenzie’s agreed to marry me.”

“Holy shit!” Charlie Skinner jumped up from his desk and strode toward Will. Will rose too and Charlie enveloped him in a bear hug. Will realized that he wanted to tell Charlie about the baby. He hadn't been sure whether or not he would feel that way. He also wanted to ask Charlie about his meeting with Mac when she'd begged him to help her get out of New York, and if Charlie’d had any other contact with her from Afghanistan and what Charlie knew about her evacuation out of Islamabad and her stay at Landstuhl. But all of that could wait. Right now Charlie was clapping him on the back, calling him “son,” and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. 

“This calls for a drink!” Charlie boomed.

“Everything calls for a drink,” Will teased.

“How true. How true. But this more than most.”

 

Will lived at MacKenzie's apartment for the next week, feeding her, coddling her, making sweet love to her, and discovering that she could sleep soundly through the night without drugs if she was in his arms. They talked more about her pregnancy and the events in Kabul. There was a great deal that she didn't remember, but what she did chilled him to the bone. She told him about Danny, the young doctor whose last name she could not recall, and how he had stopped his superior officer from doing a hysterectomy when she was brought in near death from blood loss. Jim’s description of her when they first met now made perfect sense, as did the fact that her nightmares, withdrawal and waking flashbacks got worse in the summer. June 7, 2007, she told him, had been the day their son had died. When Mac said that she was sure the baby had been alive into the evening because she felt him kicking, Will had experienced grief as profound as any in his life, equal to what he'd experienced at the loss of his mother. 

MacKenzie told him about Mickey Dolan’s death, and about the knife wound in Islamabad. How she'd been fixed up at a field hospital, but the wound had become infected so they’d had to operate again at Landstuhl. She had said simply that when she got back to Pakistan after a short stay with her parents to recuperate, she'd had a “harder time keeping it together.” Will didn't press her as to what exactly she meant by that. And then CNN had pulled her out. She had suffered unimaginably for her transgression with Brenner, he realized. And then she'd come “home” to him and . . . God curse him . . . he'd made sure that she suffered some more.

But all that was over. Everything was different now. It seemed to Will that Mac was actually enjoying the life of “a housewife,” a phrase that could always be counted on to provoke a snarl. She'd even started cooking some when he got home at night . . . simple fare like scrambled eggs and pasta . . . that was actually edible. They’d Skyped her parents and announced their engagement, which was greeted with squeals of delight from her mother and the promise of a toast with a rare single malt scotch from her father. Margaret had admired Mac’s ring and then suggested that perhaps they might consider purchasing one with a smaller stone “for everyday wear.”

In the week since the CNN broadcast, Mac had started going out again, coming downtown once for lunch with Sloan, once for coffee with Jim, once to meet with Rebecca, and once to visit NYU and discuss her options as a visiting instructor. She had an appointment the following week to do the same up at Columbia. She had talked excitedly about teaching and Will had done his best to be supportive, while reminding himself that it would only be for a year and then he could have her back in his ear.

On Thursday night, Will announced that he never wanted to spent another day or night away from her and suggested that she consider their taking up residence in his larger apartment. This occasioned a conversation that gave him a glimpse into how badly he'd hurt her during his months of “playing house” there with Nina Howard. They had agreed to look for an apartment of their own, and that seemed to be enough for MacKenzie to put the topic aside, but Will had continued to brood. What had he been doing with Nina? He wasn't sure. Paying Mac back for cheating on him by cheating on her? The relationship with Nina had always felt wrong. He'd always felt guilty. True, he and Mac weren't dating when he'd been sleeping with Nina, but he knew that it wasn't correct to say that they weren't together. They had always been together. 

On Friday morning, she'd gotten up to shower with him, which, of course, had turned into long steamy passionate sex because neither of them could seem to look at the other without one or the other of them becoming aroused. Then, she'd made him breakfast, kissed him at the door and told him that if he'd like, they could spend the weekend at his place. “Give it a dry run,” she’d said and then breaking into giggles, had added, “or perhaps a wet run would be more apropos.” Will had been euphoric all the way downtown. They were building a fortress, he thought, a fortress of happiness and love and desire that nothing . . . not Genoa, not Jerry Dantana’s lawsuit . . . nothing could breach.

By three o’clock, on December 14, 2012, he knew that he was wrong.

The story built quickly. The first red alert came in at 9:48, reporting that a 911 call had been received from an administrator inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School, stating that shots had been fired in the first floor hallway. Within minutes, the News Night staff had verified that an horrific event had taken place in the small bedroom community of New Town, Connecticut. By 10:30, Charlie had given the go ahead to break into ACN’s regularly scheduled programming and Will was in the anchor chair reporting what he considered to be the worst story of his career. True, more people died on 9/11, but this time, they were mostly children. As he spoke of the preliminary reports that more than a dozen first graders had been killed, his mind filled with images of the mothers and fathers who were clinging to each other trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, to cope with unimaginable pain and grief. His words drifted off as he suddenly saw Mac’s face in his mind and the agony that almost six years later, had claimed her features when she talked about . . . . “Will! Will! For Christ’s sake!” Jim’s voice brought him back and he began to read the copy that was scrolling in front of him once again. 

Mac still got news alerts from ACN on her phone, and as far as she knew, still had an AWM email address. Alone in her apartment, she read the first alert and her heart sank. She thought about calling Will and then decided that she would only be an unnecessary distraction. So instead, she turned on the television at 9:50 to see if there was anything being reported yet. None of the networks had anything. A few minutes later, Jim called to tell her what they knew and ask if she agreed that they should break in and put Will on the air. She did.

She had been watching him for over an hour when it started. Like many of her flashbacks, the first of her senses to be affected was smell. She could smell blood, pungent and coppery. Mac looked down at her lap, not expecting to actually see blood (she wasn't that crazy, she thought) but unable to control herself all the same. What she saw were her hands beginning to shake. She felt warm, then hot. It had been hot that night, she remembered. Even the air conditioning turned to maximum was no match for the heat of Kabul in June. She flashed on herself talking into her cell phone. Had she called someone? Whom had she called? Gasping in pain, Mac whispered, “Billy.” 

More disjointed images assailed her, as her breathing became rapid and ragged. Her chest felt heavy and her muscles had to work hard to get air in and out. Mac could hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel it's rapid beat against her ribs, and she could feel herself shaking. In her mind, she was on a floor, the carpet an industrial grey-green, curled onto her side with her knees drawn up against her swollen belly. Agony tore through her body and she felt the desire to push, and each wave of pain brought a fresh gush of blood. Mac doubled over on her sofa. Mercifully, within a few minutes the images began to recede and her breathing slowed.

The second round of flashbacks added sweating and nausea to her symptoms and she staggered to the bathroom. She was holding a baby, a baby boy, against her body. He was moving in her hands, crying weakly. MacKenzie doubled over and vomited her breakfast into the toilet. She felt hot and cold, sweating and shivering in turns. She stood shakily and opened her medicine cabinet. The second attack scared her. She was hallucinating, losing her mind. It seemed to take forever to get the top off of the bottle of Xanax, but finally she succeeded and poured out two 1 mg. tablets into her hand. 

After swallowing the Xanax, MacKenzie returned to the living room. She tried to make herself listen to Will's voice on the television, to focus on his face. It was a calming technique that she'd used in Iraq and Pakistan when she could get an Internet connection. She prayed for the Xanax to kick in to erase the image of a small, bloody infant moving against her body. Finally when she couldn't stand it for another second, she reached for her cell phone and scrolling to a number in her contacts list, touched the call button.

"Hello,” the familiar voice answered.

“Lonny?”

“Mac?” he asked even though he was sure it was her voice. Sure of that and sure that something was very very wrong.

“Lonny, I'm sorry . . . I need . . . are you busy?”

Not anymore, he thought. “No, Mac. What do you need?”

“Can you come? I'm having trouble . . . breathing and . . . Lonny, I’m afraid . . . I'm . . . going mental . . . .”

“Where are you?” he asked, trying to keep himself calm. 

“My apartment,” she replied and gave him her address and the security code to let himself in the building and into the elevator. 

“I'm on my way. You hang on, girl, ya hear? And, Mac, you’re the sanest person I know. Don't you worry. I'll be there before you know it.”

"Hurry . . . please."

Lonny stared into her pale face and dark eyes when she opened the apartment door. She seemed composed but her chest was rising and falling more rapidly than was normal unless she'd been running laps around the apartment. His years as an MP had given him enough familiarity with people suffering from PTSD to last a lifetime, and he could see that Mac was in the middle of a full-blown episode. From inside the apartment, he could hear Will McAvoy’s voice which disoriented him for a split-second until he realized that it was coming from the speakers hooked up to a television monitor. 

Opening the door wider for him to enter, MacKenzie seemed suddenly shy and chagrined. “God, Lonny, I'm really sorry for disturbing you . . . And making you rush over here like this . . . .”

He didn't tell her how many telephone calls he'd had to make from his car to rearrange his day and make sure all of his clients were adequately covered. Instead, as they were moving into the living room, he said, “Mac, when I told you that you can call me anytime you need an ear or a friend, I meant it." Both of their eyes turned to the screen where Will was reporting the current estimates of the death toll at the school, along with details of the killing of the shooter’s mother. 

“Have you seen this?” Mac asked.

“Just heard about it. Haven’t had time to get in front of a TV. Is this what set you off?”

She nodded. “They’re children, Lonny. Little children. Most of them are six years old.” She started to shake.

“Mac, have you taken anything? To help you, I mean,” he clarified, when her eyes went wide with surprise thinking he was asking if she'd overdosed herself. 

She nodded. “Two milligrams of Xanax just before I called you.”

“And are you on a maintenance dose as well?”

“No. Never have been. And I haven't had any at all in a week. I've been fine. Billy. . . Billy’s been staying here since the CNN broadcast.” She brushed hair out of her eyes with her left hand, and asked, “You saw it?”

He nodded, and asked, “Billy?” turning his head to the side as if confused. “As in Billy McAvoy?”

She smiled slightly, knowing that the questions were a joke. They both knew that there was only one Billy.

“Well, then, that explains the diamond th’ size of a small pie plate on your left hand there,” he said gesturing towards her.

She raised her hand, looked at it slightly dismayed and smiled. "I guess he was trying to make a statement."

"So, what's happenin’ Mac?”

She opened her mouth to speak and was overcome with a wave of emotion. Tears sprang into her eyes and she struggled for breath. On instinct, Lonny took two steps forward and wrapped her in his arms. He let her cry herself out.

“Let’s sit down,” she said shakily when she was able to speak again. They moved to the sofa. “The night we found Will . . . in the bathroom . . . when we were . . . in the hospital parking lot . . . in the car . . . I know that I had a meltdown . . . I don't remember everything I said . . . but I do remember at least one of the nightmares . . . and . . . well, I don't know . . . I never asked you what you thought then . . . what you figured out . . . .”

“It wasn't my place to figure anything out . . . .”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lonny,” she interrupted him. “This isn't a performance review by your employer. You’re far too intelligent to have sat there with me all night and not gotten some idea what I was raving on about.” When he continued to just look at her impassively with his “professional security” face, she sighed. “Okay. I take it, you’ll be more comfortable if I go first.” She breathed out slowly, making a slightly wheezy sound. “Okay.” She squared her shoulders.

“The dream always starts the same way. Have you ever smelled blood, a lot of it, like someone bleeding out?” He nodded slowly, amazed that she would ask such a question. She nodded in return. “If you’ve smelled it once, it's hard to forget, twice, it's impossible, I think. Anyway, the dream usually begins with that coppery smell of blood . . . and the sensation of heat. It was summer . . . June . . . and Kabul was sizzling hot. I was at the Intercontinental, so there was air conditioning, but it was no match for the heat.” It seemed to Lonny that she'd moved from describing a dream to recalling a memory.

"In the dream, it's always all over . . . Nothing’s left, just the blood and pain . . . and the sight of . . . .” Mac’s voice trailed off as she closed her eyes. “I'm making no sense at all, am I?” She opened her eyes and looked at Lonny. He made a kind of “it doesn't matter” gesture and reached over to squeeze her hand. 

“I lost a baby in Kabul in June 2007,” she said, the words tumbling out as if she feared that if she slowed down she would not be able to continue. “I was pregnant when Will and I broke up. That's why I told him about Brian . . . “ She saw Lonny look momentarily confused while struggling to keep his face impassive. Guessing his thoughts, she said quickly, “It wasn't Brenner’s . . . I hadn't seen Brian for over a year. But I thought . . . with the baby coming . . . Will and I . . . would be getting married . . . and I couldn't . . . I thought that I shouldn't start out our married lives together keeping a secret from him.”

She laughed a brittle, humorless laugh. “But I ended up keeping another secret . . . a different secret . . . from him for over five years.”

“He didn't know?”

“Not until last Saturday.” She paused to see if Lonny would say more, and then continued, “he was so angry . . . back then, I mean . . . about Brian,” she amended instantly, when she saw Lonny's expression harden. “He just walked out . . . without listening . . . and then . . . he wouldn't talk . . . communicate at all . . . with me . . . . I tried for months and months and then I had to get out . . . so Charlie sent me to do a little piece in Afghanistan . . . just in the Green Zone . . . Kabul.”

“Skinner didn't know? How far along were you?”

Just then, the Breaking News banner went up on ACN and both MacKenzie and Lonny turned to the screen as Will’s face, now visibly exhausted, appeared to report that the official death toll had just been revised upward again. 

“They’re all about his age,” Mac whispered, taking Lonny by surprise. “I mean . . . the age . . . he’d have been . . . if he’d lived.” Now Lonny understood everything. Of course, this was a trigger. How could it not be? On top of it, she'd just told McAvoy. Sweet Jesus!

As he had the night they’d found Will bleeding on the bathroom floor, he took her in his arms and just held her, grateful that this time, she had taken Xanax and it appeared to be working. “No, Charlie didn't know. I was about nineteen weeks when I saw him, but I was thin. He . . . the baby . . . came at twenty-three weeks . . . maybe twenty-four.” Despite the Xanax, her composure seemed to be slipping. “The thing that made me . . . call you . . . was that . . . I’ve been having flashbacks to the hotel room . . . but different . . . things . . . new things . . . I'm afraid I’m . . . hallucinating . . . really cracking up this time.”

“What things?”

He could feel her heart rate speed up and hear her breathing become louder, faster and more uneven. “I feel . . . him . . . the baby . . . moving . . . in my hands. I see him . . . alive.” She buried her face in her hands and began to sob. “Why am I . . . imagining . . . these things? What if . . . I'm . . . having a complete. . . breakdown . . . this time? Lonny, I'm afraid . . . am I losing my mind?”

He debated whether to ask the question that had come to him as she'd talked. He didn't want to scare her more about her faculties or her sanity. But in the end, he decided that he could do it gently enough. “Mac, I don't believe for a minute that you are having a breakdown or losing your mind.” He paused and smiled at her, and reached for a tissue from a box that sat on the coffee table. She took it from him and blew her nose. 

“You don't?”

“No,” he chuckled, “I don't. Well, ‘cept for agreein’ to marry McAvoy . . . . You probably have lost your mind there.” He was rewarded by a slight smile playing at the corners of MacKenzie’s mouth. “Mac,” Lonny continued gently, “you don't remember the doctors or nurses telling you if the baby was born alive? Even in Kabul, there must be hospital records, a birth certificate or death certificate.”

She shook her head. “There were no doctors or nurses . . . well, eventually there were . . . but by the time they found me . . . us . . . me, and got me to a hospital . . . I think they assumed he had been stillborn.”

“I don't understand.”

And so she told him what she was sure she remembered about going into labor in her hotel room, hemorrhaging and believing that she was dying, and waking up in a U.S. Military hospital. 

“I'm no doctor, and certainly no psychiatrist, Mac, but from what I know, the mind frequently deals with extremely stressful and traumatic events by suppressing our conscious awareness of the event, or details of the event. I think that for you, telling Will was kinda like pulling a cork outa the bottle. I think that more and more of what happened that night is gonna come back to you. And you know, getting hypnotized by a doctor might help you recall more too.”

“Then, you think it's memory . . . him being born alive . . . don't you?”

“Don't you?” he replied, his voice laced with such compassion that it penetrated to the furthest recesses of her being. She dropped her head into her hands and stayed that way for a long time while he rubbed her back and shoulders. Finally, she raised her head.

“Oh, God, Lonny . . . What am I going to do?”

"Well, now, that one I can answer. You’re going to go take a nice long shower while I make us some food, and then I'm going to take you to ACN where you’ll be able to finish out the rest of this motherfucking day surrounded by people who love you.”

He thought that she might argue with him, and at first, it appeared that she was gearing up to do just that, but when she spoke, she asked, “How am I going to get in? I don't work there anymore.”

“You’ve got your credentials, right?” She nodded. “We’ll start there, ‘cause I'd bet all my worldly goods that neither Will McAvoy nor Charlie Skinner reported your termination to HR. If I'm wrong, I'll make a phone call. I've got friends in high places over there.”

 

Lonny was right about Mac’s credentials still being valid. They were recognized by the scanner that admitted them to the underground garage and by the elevators to the 25th floor. Lonny was right about Mac being surrounded by people who love her. As soon as she was spotted entering the bull pen, she was enveloped in a cocoon of hugs and kisses that by the time Will entered the room, looked like a bit of a rugby scrum. It took him a minute to discern the identity of the person at the center, and then his eyes locked with Lonny’s.

"You brought her?" Will asked, walking up to his former bodyguard.

“She was having some trouble . . . with . . . all the kids being killed, and she called me.”

“She called you?” There was confusion and maybe a hint of disbelief in Will's voice. But before Lonny could answer, Will asked, “what kind of trouble? What do you mean?”

Lonny looked at him impassively. “All the dead kids, they were . . . you know . . . six years old. It . . . it was hard on her.”

Will closed his eyes, as his world rocked. It hadn't occurred to him . . . Jesus! . . . He should have thought of her, watching this alone in her apartment! Then, the import of Lonny’s words hit him. “She told you,” Will whispered, “she called you and told you.”

“Mac and me . . . We go way back. You forget, I was with her the night she found you unconscious and bleeding in your bathroom. You got any idea what that was like for her? What that did to her?”

Will certainly knew what seeing MacKenzie collapse had done to him, but he'd never . . . . “I never thought,” he said slowly, amazed at himself.

“No,” Lonny replied a bit acerbically, “no, don't imagine you ever did. As I recall, you were a bit too busy feelin’ sorry for yourself that your little scheme to torture Mac with Brian Brenner had blown up in your face, or perhaps I should say, all over the pages of New York Magazine.”

“Not my finest hour, I'll admit.” Of all the things that he'd done since Mac walked back into his life, bringing Brenner into the newsroom might have been the worst, or certainly, it tied with Nina as the worst. Mac had told him that she thought that he was trying to set her up to succumb to Brian's renewed advances and prove she was the slut he'd always know her to be, so that he was justified in his anger, but Dr. Habib’d had a different take on it. He'd made Will describe in detail Mac’s reaction to Brenner’s presence, her repeated rebuffs of Brenner’s attempts at friendliness, her pointedly moving away when Brenner tried to stand close to her, and finally, the conversation that Will overheard and then interrupted when Brenner told her that Will didn't want her and would cave to the RNC’s demand that he do the debate with a different EP, and she'd told Brenner that he had no right to discuss her personal life.

“So,” Habib had asked, “think you’ve finally seen enough?”

“Enough what?”

"Enough evidence that she rejected Brenner six years ago when she realized that she was in love with you? Enough evidence that she wants you and not him? Enough to believe that she loves you? Enough to stop hurting MacKenzie?”

Lonny cleared his throat, bringing Will back to the present, and opened his mouth, Will assumed, to threaten him with grievous bodily injury if he ever hurt Mac again. However, before Lonny could speak, they were interrupted by MacKenzie extricating herself from Sloan’s embrace and walking up to Will. He turned to her and wrapped her in his arms. “I'm so glad you’re here,” he murmured softly, burying his face in her hair, and realizing that it smelled faintly of peaches, “so very glad you’re here.”

He looked up at Lonny. “Thank you,” Will said simply and from the bottom of his heart.

When Will went back to the news desk, Jim offered Mac the headset, but she declined to assume the role of Will’s EP, although she did stay in the control room during most of the afternoon’s broadcast. She clung to Don’s hand while Will read out the names and ages of the dead. A somber and tragic roll call, that only hinted at the broken and devastated families for whom life would never be the same. Finally, Charlie insisted that Will, physically exhausted and emotionally drained from nearly eight continuous hours in front of the camera, turn the desk over to Elliott and take MacKenzie home.

Neither could sleep, and so they lay in each other’s arms, while Mac told him about the flashbacks she'd been experiencing and what she feared they meant. He fought down his guilt to give her the strength and comfort that she needed, and she did the same for him. 

Then suddenly, Mac changed subjects, fast forwarding to her stop-over in London three years before and her visit to the doctor who told her that she would likely never be able to have another baby. “I remember leaving his surgery and getting half a block toward the tube station and just leaning against a lamppost and losing it . . . sobbing . . . with people staring at me as they went by.” 

Will didn't know what to say. He wanted to beg for her forgiveness, but that didn't seem to be what she needed. So, they just stared at each other. Finally, he spoke. “Please stop biting that lip,” Will said, raising a hand and running his index finger along MacKenzie’s lower lip. “I love that lip. In fact, that is my number one, all-time favorite lip on the planet Earth.” As he'd hoped, his all-time favorite lip and its mate turned up slightly as an expression of love and understanding came into her eyes.

“Billy, if you were serious about wanting a child,” she began hesitantly, “then I'd like us to make an appointment and go to a fertility specialist. I think I'll do better if I know whether or not it's going to be possible. One way or another, I'd like to stop . . . wondering.”

“Of course. We’ll do whatever you want. Whenever you want.” 

“Thank you.” She curled against him, and he kissed her. She returned the kiss and ran her hands over his back and around and down his torso. Tired as he was, he felt the familiar sensation of desire kindling in his belly. They would be alright, he thought. Whatever happened, they had each other, and they would be alright.


	4. Christmas Present

Mac was airsick during their flight to London for the Christmas holiday. Will knew that she was majorly pissed off about it, since she viewed it as a physical failing and personal embarrassment. It seemed that MacKenzie McHale’s cast iron stomach, impervious even to Blackhawks in high turbulence, was legendary among CNN embeds and the United States Marine Corp. It put her in a foul mood to lose her cookies in the First Class restroom of an Airbus A380, the largest and possibly most luxurious passenger plane in service between JFK and Heathrow, during a flight so smooth that the fasten seat belt sign hadn't been on in hours. Since Will’s “go to” method of dealing with his fiancée when sadness, worry or anger consumed her . . . wiping all thought from her mind except the sensation of multiple orgasms . . . obviously wasn't an available alternative in the First Class section of a British Airways jet, he contented himself with kissing her hand and assuring her that her secret was safe with him. 

Will had surprised MacKenzie with two first class tickets to London as an early Christmas present. He hoped that spending the holidays away from New York and with her family would take her mind off of the subject of her fertility, which had become a 900 pound gorilla that followed them from place to place and room to room. They had gone to see her gynecologist, a woman named Denise Barrington, who had also been MacKenzie’s doctor when she was pregnant. To Will’s surprise, it appeared that Mac had never told Dr. Barrington much of anything about the outcome (Barrington’s word) of the pregnancy. From what Will could gather, when Mac had returned to New York nearly three years before, she had simply stated that she had lost the baby and that the details weren't pertinent to anything in her present life, and Dr. Barrington had not pressed her. Now, Mac described the delivery (Will had jumped involuntarily when Dr. Barrington had used that term) of the baby in Kabul, her admission to the military hospital and the young doctor who had tried to “fix” her. 

MacKenzie kept her recitation clinical and limited to the information that she deemed pertinent to assessing her present ability to become pregnant again and carry a child. Even so, Will marveled at her composure. Her façade cracked only once, when she described her visit to Sir Robert Eagleton, and his dire predictions of infertility. 

Dr. Barrington was tempted to tell them to go home and start trying to get pregnant since she wasn't sure how else to satisfy Mac’s desire to “test” whether her repaired reproductive system was working properly, but she sensed that MacKenzie needed something more. So, she gave them the name of a fertility specialist to whom she had referred patients in the past, and wished them well. She knew that other than for a very brief time two years before, she had not been asked by MacKenzie for a prescription for birth control pills. In the winter of 2011, MacKenzie had told her that she was no longer having sex and they agreed that it was pointless to put unnecessary hormones into her body. Denise didn't inquire whether Mac and Will were using any kind of protection now. Mac seemed so convinced that she could not conceive, that Dr. Barrington assumed that they were not.

Within hours of leaving Dr. Barrington’s office, MacKenzie made the first available appointment to see the fertility specialist, and got a date in mid-January. Will knew that in the scheme of things and with the Christmas holidays almost upon them, it really wasn't very long to wait, but, he mused once again, looking over at Mac’s pale and slightly drawn face silhouetted against the airplane window, it seemed like an endless stretch of time. Mac had remained on edge since her disclosure to him that she doubted she would be able “to give him a child,” something she seemed to take as Devine retribution for breaking God’s laws by cheating on him and by not taking proper care of their baby. Arguing the subject with her was futile (wasn't it always?) so Will hit on the idea of getting away from New York for two of the weeks that they had to wait before seeing the fertility specialist.

Mac had been seeing a therapist recommended by Dr. Habib about her recollections, dreams and flashbacks of the baby’s birth. Mac liked that the therapist, a woman, “didn't try to push drugs” at her to “calm me down,” but instead, assured Mac that her dreams and waking “episodes” were returning memory, and while upsetting, were a normal part of the process of her mind allowing itself to experience more of the trauma she had suffered. At a joint session with Will, the therapist let Mac know that in her opinion, there wasn't a woman alive who would not have been deeply traumatized by the experience of going through labor and delivering her baby alone in a hotel room in a foreign country, and then holding him as he died. The doctor then assured Will, still shaken by the clarity of that description, that it was him, “the loving presence in MacKenzie’s life of the baby’s father,” as she put it, that was giving Mac the “safety net” required for her mind to allow her to begin to process what had happened in Kabul. She told him that this was necessary for Mac’s “recovery,” and, as upsetting as it was for him to see her suffer, he should not feel guilty. This was not something that he was inflicting on her. Will sighed thinking about it. That too would be waiting for them when they returned to New York. 

But for right now, Will hoped that MacKenzie would have a happy Christmas in her childhood home and surrounded by her family. 

They hired a car at Heathrow and Will managed to drive them to Surrey without killing them or anyone else. Only once, turning on a country road near the Ailesbury homestead, did he drive on the “wrong” side of the road. Mac’s parents welcomed them warmly, and unlike his last visit to Ailesbury Hall, when he had been assigned a guest bedroom, they were both directed to put their things in MacKenzie’s room. Mac’s brother, Julian, his wife Vanessa and their two young children were already there, and her younger brother, Tommy, was expected the following day. While Julian was a trifle reserved, Vanessa, who had always liked Will, made up for it by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him with gusto. Within an hour of their arrival, they had settled in and Will was pleased to see that MacKenzie seemed more relaxed and happier than she had been since the day of the Sandy Hill shooting.

 

"Is this the bed you slept in when you were a little girl?” Will asked when they were alone together in her room after everyone had turned in for the night. 

"Well, when we were staying in this house, yes, it was. This was my grandparents’ home when I was very little, but we were in New York most of the time. When we came here, and after I got old enough to be out of the nursery, I moved into this room. So, yes, this is my childhood bed. And, we seem to have my parents’ blessing to engage in pre-marital sex in it,” she added with a twinkle in her eye.

The conversation at dinner had turned to the subject of a wedding, and Mac had been amazed that Will had given it as much thought as he had. He had said clearly that he saw no reason for a prolonged engagement and was perfectly willing to have the wedding on either side of the pond, although he thought that it might be easier to bring the English contingent to New York than to try to transport the News Night staff to the UK. He was fine with an Episcopal church or with City Hall. He just wanted to make MacKenzie his wife. And so, they had settled on a church wedding (mostly to please her mother) in New York after the first of the year. 

MacKenzie looked at the full sized bed somewhat ruefully. “It's a little smaller than my queen sized or your king.”

“Neither of which do we fully occupy,” he retorted, referring to their propensity to sleep closely and tightly entwined. 

"No, I suppose not.” She smiled at him. “Now that you bring it up, this bed does hold a lot of memories.” Although she did not say it, Will judged from her face that some of them, those made in the last five years, were less than happy.

He took her in his arms and nuzzled her neck, working his way up her throat to her jawline, and then down again until he moved her blouse aside to press his lips to her breast. “Want to make some new memories?” he asked playfully.

They did. Will brought Mac to orgasm repeatedly, sometimes covering her mouth with his to muffle her moans and cries lest some member of her family come running to see if she was alright. Afterward, as she slept, Will replayed parts of their lovemaking in his head. He’d always loved the shape of Mac’s breasts, but no one would ever call MacKenzie McHale voluptuous. He certainly didn't mind (truth was there was nothing about MacKenzie’s body that he minded). Besides, basically, Will was a leg man and those Mac had to sweet excess. But tonight, he'd paid particular attention to her breasts. Now he tried to decide if he’d imagined it or if they’d grown larger and more sensitive. Suddenly, he had the thought that he'd made love to her for weeks when she'd been pregnant. Her body had to have been changing. Had he noticed anything? He honestly couldn't remember. Should he have noticed? Wasn't the clueless male getting the surprise of his life just a Hollywood cliché? Without resolving any of these questions, Will drifted off to sleep.

Tommy arrived shortly before luncheon the next day, bringing a case of South African wine that was the product of a venture in which he was investing. Although it wasn't the McHale’s custom to drink in the middle of the day, Tommy insisted that everyone have a glass. After a second sip, Mac looked strangely disconcerted and the color drained from her face. Soon the conversation trailed off as each of the others began staring at Mac. 

“Are you okay?” It was Will who finally broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Yes. Quite.” Mac flashed a bright smile all around. Will wondered if he were alone in recognizing it as the one that she had perfected to cover her true emotions. “Just felt a bit queasy there for a moment. I'm fine now.” She shot Tommy an apologetic look. “The wine’s really delicious, Tom. Honestly. I swear.” Several of the others, including Will, jumped in to back up this assessment.

“So you say. You still look a touch green around the gills, Mackie.” Tom rejoined. “Remind me not to take you on any sales calls.” Everyone laughed. Will knew that she wanted the conversation to move on to another subject, and so he refrained from commenting on the fact that for the rest of the meal, she continued to look pale and ate little. However, he caught Vanessa watching Mac like a hawk with a strange contemplative expression. 

That evening, Mac helped her sister-in-law give her niece and nephew their baths and put them to bed. While she was drying eight-month-old Teddy, he knocked his head sharply against her left breast, causing Mac to cry out in pain sufficiently loudly that Vanessa took the baby from her arms.

Mac wrapped her arms across her breast. “Ouch! Jeez! He's got quite the hard little head on him.”

Again Nessa gave her a strange look, but all she said was “yes, he's got a hard head.”

By the next morning, however, Nessa, always the straightforward and confrontative type, could no longer keep her suspicions to herself. At breakfast, she'd talked Mac into going out for an early morning ride. Will had been delighted when Mac had reappeared in the Morning Room wearing boots, breeches, a turtle neck, cashmere jumper and hacking jacket that had been hers as a teenager. When she put on the black velvet-covered hard hat, he'd insisted on snapping a picture with his phone. She’d initially fought the idea, but finally relented and indulged him.

The morning was sunny and crisp, with just traces of the last snowfall clumped under bushes and along the less well-travelled part of the lane. Although Mac protested that she hadn't been on a horse in years, she'd been an accomplished rider, and Vanessa had been right, once you knew how, it comes back easily. In no time, the two women were flying over the short stone fences that divided parts of the estate from others and from its neighbors, all the while laughing like school girls. 

They had slowed down to a walk, mostly so that they could talk, when Mac was once again felled by nausea. This time, it was so intense that she was forced to dismount, hobble her horse, and find a clump of bushes into which to vomit her breakfast. Vanessa also dismounted and took the rains of Mac’s horse, along with her own. 

“Mackie,” Vanessa began when Mac stood up and pulled a bottle of water out of her jacket pocket. “Lucky you brought that, what?”

Mac laughed a trifle shakily. “I always have water. The guys I was embedded with said I'll die with a bottle of water in my hand.”

“Well, there’s a lovely thought. Although, I suppose it's better than dying thirsty.” Then her smile faded and she took a breath. “Mackie . . . it's none of my business, but . . . do you think . . . could you be pregnant?”

Mac’s face became expressionless like an iron curtain had descended across it. “No. That’s not possible.”

“Well, you know,” Vanessa soldiered on, “the pill’s not foolproof. And well, the ralphing and your breast seemed particularly tender when Teddy whacked you last night . . . . Maybe you should consider popping round the chemist’s and getting a test. You know, just to make sure.”

“No. I'm sure. I'm not pregnant. I think I picked up a bit of a stomach bug on the plane.”

There was something about the flatness in MacKenzie’s voice that made Vanessa feel like she had stumbled into the middle of a minefield. She struggled for a gracious retreat. “Okay. So, tell me that you were on the rag all last week, and I'll shut up.” Mac said nothing, but her eyes gave her away. “But, you weren't,” Nessa continued. “My God, Mac! You’re late, aren’t you?” It was only half a question. 

“I've been under a lot of stress. Genoa’s still a nightmare. It's not unusual for me to be late when I'm stressed.”

“Mackie! Don't be a goose! You’re late, you’ve been sick twice that I know about, and I'll bet there’ve been a couple of other times, and your breasts are tender. How late are you? A week?” Mac continued to stare at her like a deer caught in headlights. “More! Ten days? Two weeks? MacKenzie, you need to find out if you’re pregnant.”

Vanessa’s mouth fell open when Mac’s reaction to her little speech was to say, “not that long, a week,” and burst into tears. She'd never seen Mac cry before, not even when she was in pain and recovering from the stab wound. Vanessa took this as further evidence that her sister-in-law’s hormones were under the control of a microscopically sized McAvoy. Then, thinking she knew the problem, Vanessa began speaking again. 

“Mackie, if Will’s said that he doesn't want children, that’s not true. It's just that he sometimes thinks he's too old. Even before, he did . . . but as soon as it's confirmed, he’ll be thrilled. I know it. He used to have this whole fantasy about a little girl . . . “ She broke off, seeing pain intensify in Mac’s eyes. “He wants your child, Mackie. People don't change that much. Not about fundamentals . . . .”

“You’ve spoken to Will about having children?” MacKenzie sounded incredulous.

“Not each other’s children!” Nessa hoped to inject a little lightness back into the conversation. “But yes . . . we talked . . . years ago, but as I said, people don't change that much.”

“Oh, God, Ness . . . .” Mac sighed deeply, brushing the hair out of her face. “ I really don't think that I'm pregnant.” But even as she said the words, doubt, fueled by a vague sense of recognition, started nagging at the fringes of her mind. “And anyway, I can't just waltz down to the village and into a . . . drugstore . . . and buy a home tester. I'm the Earl’s unmarried daughter. It's bad enough that I'm going to show up in church on Christmas Eve with the American television personality who just fired me for the biggest screw-up in the history of cable news. That's going to occasion more than a few twitters . . . tweets . . . I can assure you. All we'd need is a serving of pregnancy rumors on the side.”

Vanessa could certainly see the logic in this. “Okay. How about this, when we get back, I'll give you some vitamins to start taking. They’re for nursing mothers, but not much different from prenatal ones. Then when you get back to New York, if you haven't started flying the Japanese flag by then, you’ll get a test.” Mac didn't speak. “Are we all sorted, then?” Mac nodded. “And, no more fences . . . We’ll keep it to a walk or trot on the way back.” Mac nodded again, suddenly too tired to argue, but thinking that even if she had conceived, according to Dr. Eagleton, fences or no, it was only a matter of time before it would be gone.

 

Christmas Eve at Ailesbury Hall reminded Will of why he had always hated Christmas . . . because, other than the two Christmases he'd spent with MacKenzie . . . Christmas had never been like this. With very few exceptions . . . really only one that he could recall clearly . . . Christmas with John McAvoy went one of two ways, either his father was drunk, beating on Will or his mother and threatening the others, or absent, and while the rest of the family had a little peace, it was always marred by the pervasive fear that his father would be coming home. As Will helped four-year-old Tessa McHale hang 100 year-old hand-blown glass ornaments on a ten-foot tall Spruce, he became lost in the recollection of lying in his bed seething with anger at his own impotence, as his mother’s voice, fighting back tears, begged his father to stop breaking the ornaments her parents had acquired during her childhood by plucking them off of the tree and dropping them one at a time to the floor. It was a little less than a year before the incident with the liquor bottle and he'd still been too frightened at the time to confront John McAvoy. Tessa’s insistent and increasingly strident repetition of the words, “Uncle Will! Uncle Will!” finally brought him back to a reality that included a warm, festive house, filled with laughter, and MacKenzie’s worried contemplation of him from the doorway.

Teddy was put to bed. The rest of the family, including for the first time, Tessa, had a light supper at which they were joined by a rather large compliment of McHale and Morgan cousins, many of whom seemed downright star-struck, not to mention tongue-tied, meeting the famous American television presenter, Will McAvoy. Not so Tessa. She had attached herself to her Uncle Will “like a barnacle” according to her mother, who assured him that he should feel free to “peel her off at any time.” But Tess had eyes like her Aunt Mackie and so there was no chance of that. Instead, she sat curled in his lap as Will read aloud Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” and Francis Pharcellus Church’s famous editorial, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” to the assembled multitude.

Mac’s prediction to Nessa was spot-on. She and Will turned more than a few heads at church on Christmas Eve. Will, however, didn't seem to notice. As the High Church Anglican Mass unfolded, Will was lost in the music, the smell of incense commingled with that of the pine bows with which the small church was decorated, and the sight by candlelight, of the woman whom he loved more than he thought possible. After about fifteen minutes, Tessa pushed her way along the pew to get to Uncle Will, stepping on her father's, grandparents and Uncle Tommy’s toes in the process, and Will was struck by the idea that his son should be there, be here standing between his parents. He saw his son in one of the little Morgan cousins, a blond little boy of five and a half with MacKenzie’s eyes, dressed in a blue blazer, his knobby knees sticking out below short grey flannel pants. His son should have been with them . . . would have been, if not for him . . . if not for his insane reaction to Mac’s letting herself be seduced by a man in whom only a short time before she had invested her life and believed she loved enough to marry. 

Since learning about the pregnancy, Will had listened to her voice messages. He hadn't gotten very far since it was hard to find time alone during the day and he was awake at night a lot less frequently now that he was sleeping with MacKenzie. He was still in mid-April 2007, listening to the ones from the time before she'd left for Afghanistan. That he'd deleted her voicemails was another lie he'd told MacKenzie, although it was true that he had never before listened to them. Now, they were seared into his brain. 

They followed an agonizing pattern. She'd start out asking him to call her in a conversational voice, telling him that there were things she wanted him to hear, and even if he couldn't forgive her, would he please give her the chance to talk to him. She would end sobbing, saying she was so, so sorry for everything, for even speaking with Brian again, and for hurting him. She told him over and over that she loved him, loved him more than her life, and that she'd sent Brian away over a year before and hadn't seen him since. Hearing the grief, guilt and fear in her voice was made more painful by his knowledge that it had not been just for herself that she had pleaded with him to speak to her again, but also for the life that she was carrying within her, the life that he had put inside her. If he had only answered his phone just once, only read one of her emails, only listened to one of the voice messages, only been willing to listen to what she wanted to tell him . . . . 

Will found himself standing as the opening strains of “O Come, O Come, Emanuel” filled the church. It was, he knew, MacKenzie’s favorite Christmas Carol. He looked at her, this woman, who because of his . . . his what? . . . his anger? . . . his stubbornness? . . . had given birth to their child alone and isolated in a foreign land, and then held that child while he died, the woman, who Will was becoming increasingly certain was at that moment, carrying the beginnings of a second child . . . a second chance. 

But how were they going to get through this when she was so convinced that even if there were another pregnancy, it would surely end in miscarriage. Suddenly, as he stood where centuries of her ancestors had been baptized, worshiped, married and buried, Will saw Mac’s acceptance of Sir Robert Eagleton’s dire predictions not just as neurosis and confirmation that punishment for her sins was eternal, but as a consequence of her upbringing. She had been trained since childhood to respect and accept the opinions of people of her class, educated people, older people, whose names were preceded by “Sir” and “Lord.” It was no wonder that the opinion of a brash, young American doctor was no match for the grey hair and authoritative tone of the august London physician. 

Just as his distracted thoughts reached this point, he noticed that MacKenzie was trembling. The church was old, cold and drafty, and Will hoped that if anyone else noticed, they would assume that Mac was shivering from the cold. He knew better. He took a step toward her, bringing Tessa, who had tucked herself under his arm, with him. Pretending to want to share her hymnal, he pressed his body against hers, and whispered softly, “sing.”

“Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,  
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,  
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,  
And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emanuel  
Shall come to you, O Israel.”

They sang together, and Mac discovered, as Will had intended, that it was impossible to hyperventilate while singing. 

Later, as they were undressing for bed, they heard a sharp knock on the bedroom door. "Mackie, Will . . . It's Ness.” Mac grabbed a robe and opened the door. Nessa handed her a small oblong package wrapped in Christmas paper and tied with green ribbon. “A little extra something from me to you. I brought it tonight because you’ll want to have privacy when you open it.” Surprise stole Mac’s words, so she only glanced in the direction where Will was standing. “Oh, he's okay,” Nessa added jovially.

“Thank you. I don't know what to say.” Mac hugged her sister-in-law.

“Well, it's not the Crown Jewels, but I think it might come in handy.” Nessa kissed Mac’s cheek. “See you in the morning.”

Never one for suspense, Mac tore off the paper as soon as the door was closed and found herself holding a box containing two early detection home pregnancy tests.

 

MacKenzie’s bouts of nausea continued to be unpredictable and not confined to early morning, although the ones that occasioned the most vomiting seemed to occur mostly right after she got out of bed. Will insisted on accompanying her to the loo and holding her against him as she retched into the toilet bowl. Sometimes she argued that it would look odd if anyone saw them going in or coming out, and other times she felt too weak and sick to care. But through it all, she refused to take a pregnancy test.

By December 31st, Nessa had given up asking Mac if she’d used the tests, and taken to making surreptitious eye contact with Will and then giving him a questioning look. He would return her looks with a slight shake of his head. On the 31st, Mac had arranged to drive to the outskirts of London to have a “girls’ luncheon” with four friends from her university days. As soon as she left the house, Nessa put Julian on “daddy duty,” and commandeered Will to take a walk. 

It was an absolutely gorgeous day. A light dusting of snow was falling to freshen up the blanket of white that had covered the countryside since Boxing Day. Hands in pockets, Will and his soon to be sister-in-law walked along companionably, chatting about their lives, the children, New York, the wedding and Jerry Dantana’s lawsuit. When the subject of Jules arose, Will observed that he finally seemed to be thawing a bit.

“You know, when you came on the scene, Ted was so taken with you it was almost as though he had fallen in love with you right along with MacKenzie. Although Jules was loathe to admit it, he was actually more than a little jealous. He channelled that jealousy into anger and protectiveness when you broke Mackie’s heart . . . “

“I broke Mac’s heart!” Will interrupted in a voice laced with indignation. He instantly regretted the outburst. It was an automatic response left over from the days when he was so sure that he had been the victim, always the victim, the only victim. In his mind, he could hear Jim Harper’s voice telling him that he really was an asshole.

“Don't worry, Mackie always said it was all her doing, and that she'd broken your heart. She would never let anyone suggest that you were even remotely to blame.”

Nessa’s words slammed into him. He raised both of his gloved hands to cover his face. “Jesus, Ness, I can be such an arse.” She smiled slightly at his use of the English pronunciation. “Of course I was to blame.” Will continued, sinking down onto the low stone wall that ran along the lane. “Yes, she started seeing Brenner again and didn't tell me, and yes, she slept with him during that time, but, my God . . . when she did tell me, I reacted . . . I don't even know what the word for it is . . . appallingly . . . insanely. She never deserved what I did to her. I know I broke her heart. You have no idea how well I know it.”

Nessa sat beside him and took his hand in hers. “Will, what’s going on with you and Mackie?” she asked gently. “Are there problems?”

“God, no!”

“Why won't she find out if she's pregnant?”

“Because she's terrified,” he whispered.

“Of being a mum? Nonsense! She'll be brilliant.”

“No. Not that. Of finding out she's not pregnant, and of finding out that she is pregnant because she thinks she'll lose it . . . the baby.”

Nessa looked puzzled. “I don't understand.”

Will sighed deeply. “When Mac was in London, after CNN recalled her from Pakistan, she was examined by a doctor who told her that most likely she would be unable to conceive, and if she ever did, she would miscarry early.”

“Who? Why?” Then, comprehension dawning in her eyes, Ness answered her own second question, “the knife wound.”

Knowing that he could not correct her since the truth was not his to tell, Will answered her first question. “A gynecologist named Robert Eagleton.”

“That loathsome man.” Ness shook her head. “He delivered Tessa when I was young and foolish and accepting that credentials meant excellence. I'm sure that's how Mackie got to him. He’s insufferable. When Teddy came along, I wouldn't let him near me.”

“I'd like to smash his face and I've never met him.”

“Well, if it's any consolation, I hear that he's so crushed that he won't be delivering the Duchess’s baby that he's practically suicidal.”

Will smiled sadly. “Not much consolation, but some.”

“Yes. Quite.” Nessa looked equally glum. Then she turned to Will. “But what about the American doctors, the ones that took care of her . . . operated on her in Landstuhl . . . I take it they didn't say the same thing?”

Will shook his head. “No. In fact, as I understand it, the surgeon told her that he'd fixed everything so that she should be able to have kids . . . .”

“She doesn't believe his opinion over Eagleton's?” It was said somewhere between a question and a statement.

Will shook his head again. “I've been thinking a lot about why not. Part of it, I think, is just her natural tendency to prepare for the worst.”

Nessa smiled. “Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best. If I had a pound for every time I've heard the Ambassador say that.”

“But most of it is because of me . . . what I did to her.” Will stopped speaking and looked at Nessa. “I convinced her that she had done a terrible thing . . . that she was a despicable person . . . that she deserved . . . .” Will’s voice broke as his eyes filled with tears. Nessa squeezed tighter on the hand she was holding. “For so long, she's thought everything bad that happens is her fault . . . Don . . . he's one of the other producers . . . told me that she'd once said to him that . . . that what she'd done . . . had broken one of God’s laws. I did that to her, and now . . . now I'm afraid . . . “ Will was crying so hard that he could barely speak. “She thinks that . . . .”

Comprehension and compassion suffused Nessa’s face. “That God is punishing her by making her barren,” Ness finished for him. He nodded. “Will, you must stop her from thinking that way! Here,” she said, pulling a tissue from her pocket and wiping away his tears, “your face is going to freeze. You can't leave her trapped in her fears. You have to make her look at this logically, according to the facts.”

“I know,” Will replied miserably, “but how?”

“Well, the American surgeon saw her wounds while they were fresh, right? Eagleton did not. He . . . what is his name? The American doctor?”

“Danny,” Will replied, adding, “she doesn't remember his last name,” when Ness looked at him quizzically.

“He . . . Danny . . . was right in there doing the repairs. Again, Eagleton was not. So, who should be in the better position to assess the severity of the stabbing, or its long-term effects, or how well the repair measures are going to work? I'd say it’s this Danny, hands down.”

 

Mac returned from her lunch in good spirits with tales of her friends getting “totally pissed.” Nessa asked if she had partaken in a voice that sounded artificially casual to Will’s ears, and Mac sent her a short knowing, slightly irritated look before replying that no, she'd had a long drive ahead of her on icy roads. 

That night, shortly after they had welcomed in 2013, and Will and Mac were alone in their room, Will tried out Nessa’s logic. He had started saying that he thought that Mac should use the pregnancy test, that he understood her reticence, but that they needed to face the situation since she didn't seem to be getting a period and the nausea didn't seem to be a flu, or food poisoning or any of the other explanations Mac had been proposing. He ran through Nessa’s comparison of Eagleton’s knowledge verses Danny’s experience. “It seems to me,” he concluded, “that what we have are two sets of predictions and the choice as to which we are going to put our money on. We have Danny predicting that you will be able to conceive and Eagleton predicting that you will not. Then, we have Eagleton predicting that you will miscarry if you do get pregnant and Danny predicting that you will not. Even though Eagleton is the more experienced doctor, the evidence suggests that Danny was actually in the better position to assess your condition and make his predictions on the basis of that assessment. Under those circumstances, I don't believe it would be foolhardy to trust Danny over Eagleton.”

“I know,” Mac whispered miserably, curling against him. “I'm just scared.” She felt frail again and sounded like a child. Will wrapped her more tightly in his arms.

“I know, sweetheart,” he said gently, kissing her hair. “But Mac, please, please, for the love of God, just go pee on the damned stick.”

To his surprise, she didn't say a word before jumping up, grabbing the box out of the drawer where she had put it, and leaving the room. Truth be told, he wasn't absolutely certain that she'd gone to the bathroom until she returned a few minutes later and thrust the test stick in its paper sheath into his hands before putting the box back in the drawer. Then, she threw herself, face down, onto the bed, hiding her head in the pillows.

“Did you . . . ?”

“Yes. You look at it. I can't.”

“How many minutes?”

“A couple more,” came the muffled answer. 

Will leaned down and kissed her neck. “Kenz, it will be okay. Whatever happens will be okay as long as we are together. If it's just the two of us for the rest of our lives, that's fine. It will be a fine life. You’re enough for me. You’re everything to me.”

He waited another few minutes, nuzzling her silky hair, which now smelled of lavender from Margaret’s English shampoo, and running a hand soothingly across her back. Then he sat up and pulled the test stick out of it protective sheath. A dark blue plus sign appeared in the little window. “Kenz, my love,” he said softly, “turn over and look at me.” She shook her head and stayed where she was. Okay, he thought. “Like I said before, for us, this is a choice between predictions, educated guesses, and we can decide which one to trust. I, for one, am going to go with Danny.” At that, she turned her head and body slightly in his direction.

Will leaned down and whispered in her ear, “and, so far, it's one to nothing for my team. Round one goes to Danny.”

On January 2nd, Will and Mac flew back to New York, leaving Margaret to make travel arrangements to come over the following week and begin helping with preparations for the wedding. Uncharacteristically, Mac slept for most of the flight home. Will was far too keyed up to join her. The thought that Kenz was pregnant ran in an endless loop through his brain. They had made a baby . . . another baby, his mind amended . . . a baby that they would keep safe this time and nurture and raise. He knew that Mac was still frightened, still unsure whether this was just the rise so that the drop would be that much more painful, but somehow he felt confident, or at least, hopeful that this was life giving him another chance like it had the day MacKenzie walked back into the ACN newsroom. 

 

Three days later, they were sitting in front of Denise Barrington’s desk, the appointment at the fertility clinic having been cancelled. Another urine sample had just given the same positive result, as had the second stick in Nessa's Christmas present, and the doctor was explaining that she was going to have a nurse do a blood draw “to look at your hormone levels and get some baseline metrics to measure against as the pregnancy progresses.” Mac looked pinched and tense, as she absently picked at a thread on the edge of her scarf. Dr. Barrington was somewhat at a loss to find a way to help her relax. 

“MacKenzie,” she began, “I'm happy to take care of you through this pregnancy. In fact, I intend to. But I'd also like you to have a consultation with a friend of mind. He's the new Chief of Obstetrics over at Beth Israel, and is something of a wunderkind. He's the youngest guy they’ve ever made a department head, and maybe the youngest ever at any major medical center. Anyway, he's also possibly the best high risk pregnancy doctor in the country, certainly the best in New York . . . . “ She trailed off as she realized that MacKenzie had gone sheet white and grabbed Will’s hand at the words, “high risk.”

“Mac,” Dr. Barrington continued, looking directly into her eyes, “’high risk’ is not a prediction of trouble, it's merely a classification based on the fact that you’ve had one pre-term stillbirth and postpartum hemorrhage. Okay?” She repeated the word until Mac nodded her head in agreement. “Okay. I'm going to call over to Dr. Shivitz’s office and see if I can get you an appointment.”

Will wondered if Mac was going to correct the doctor’s assumption that their baby had been stillborn. Since working with the therapist, Mac was now sure that her “visions” of their son alive were actually memories, but she didn't speak. Then, he noticed that a slightly blank look had come over MacKenzie’s face, and he heard her breathing become shallow and more rapid. “What is it?” he asked her. But she didn't appear to hear him, or see him, or even realize where she was any longer. “Mac,” he said more forcefully.

“What? What did you say the doctor’s name was? What’s his first name?” Mac asked softly as she rejoined reality. Denise Barrington didn't respond since she was engrossed in working her way through the Beth Israel switchboard. 

Will pulled out his phone and ran a Google search for “Shivitz” and “Beth Israel.” A few seconds later, he handed the phone to MacKenzie, saying only, “Daniel. Daniel Shivitz.” He watched as Mac stared transfixed at the small screen, and then as she gently placed the tips of her fingers on the face displayed there as if touching the cheek of a loved one. She looked up into Will’s eyes, her own shining with tears as her chin trembled and she bit her lower lip. “I know,” he said, leaning over to kiss the side of her forehead, “I know. It's a sign, Mac, a sign that everything’s going to be just fine. We’re going to have a baby.” 

She smiled at him and nodded, tears spilling now, and he breathed a sigh as relief coursed through his body like a drug. Vaguely, he heard Dr. Barrington explaining to Shivitz that she was sending him a referral, a patient, aged 37, who, a little over five years before, had had a preterm stillborn delivery with some complications. “McHale. MacKenzie McHale,” she said. Then a pause, and Dr. Barrington asked, “Dan? Are you still there?” Yes, Will thought, he was going to enjoy the next few days enormously.


End file.
